#It ends ambiguously but you can decide what you want. I know how it ends.

[kitkat13001]

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖࣪ 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚝 𝚍𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚖𝚜

i can see the end as it begins my one condition is say you’ll remember me standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset, babe red lips and rosy cheeks, say you’ll see me again even if it’s just in your wildest dreams 

>> tooru oikawa x reader

>> angst, friends to lovers, ambiguous (happy?) ending, fem-leaning reader (no pronouns, one use of the phrase ‘trophy wife’), title and lyrics from taylor swift’s song “wildest dreams”, dividers by @/anitalenia and @/saradika-graphics

oikawa was more than your high school boyfriend. he was more to you than any cookie-cutter definition you could slap on him like a discount store sticker. 

for starters, you’d basically known him since elementary school. 

you still remember the first day of second grade, the chatterbox of a boy who sat on your right and the mellow kid in the godzilla t-shirt who sat on your left. 

the three of you have practically been inseparable since. 

you and iwa were admittedly the more rational of the trio, while oikawa was the lallygagging daydreamer wandering behind you two. 

that is, until you get to high school, and suddenly he’s the volleyball star dreamboat who’s got the whole school fawning over him. 

it felt like a dream when oikawa had asked you out. you’d figured that with his pick of anyone at seijoh, you wouldn’t be at the top of his list. 

you were wary at first, of course. you’re not stupid, and you’re far from naive. for years you had listened to your friends talk about their boyfriends and girlfriends as if they were really, truly soulmates. like their relationships were years rather than months long. you watched them celebrate anniversaries by the week. 

you knew that high school love wasn’t meant to last. but still, this never felt like cliche high school romance. 

tooru was your first everything. and you were careful, cautious to not let this infatuation consume and ruin you like you had seen happen to so many of your friends and their first loves. but it was so easy to love tooru, and to let him love you back. he knew you better than anyone, held the map to your mind and heart alike. your last years in school together were the best you ever had. 

your caution was all for naught, though, as most worries are. all the precautions you’d taken, the bubble wrap you’d encased your heart in useless in the end. 

you don’t know how it never came up before. of course, you’d thought about your plans after graduation. you knew what you wanted to do, where you wanted to go. but whenever you were with tooru, you didn’t give a damn about the future; all that mattered was here and now, just him beside you. 

that’s why it catches you so off-guard when he makes an offhanded remark about argentina when matsukawa asks about his post-graduate plans, like he had already made up his mind. 

mattsun smiles, making a joke and wishing him luck. he says the same to you, good luck with this one here, but you’re still reeling, unable to return his smile. 

tooru laughs before bidding him goodbye, steering you away with an arm around your shoulder. you follow, lost in your head.

“what was that?” you ask, when you’re finally able to form words again. you duck out from under his arm and he frowns. 

“what?”

“argentina?” 

he blinks. “argentina?”

“since when did we decide that we are off to argentina?” you demand, panic and volume rising in your voice. 

he looks half-surprised, and then nervous. 

“well i didn’t…i mean, i didn’t decide, i just thought—”

“didn’t you ever think to ask me?” you cut in. “what about what i want? doesn’t that matter to you?”

“of course it matters to me!” he exclaims, running a hand through his hair. “i just figured we’d figure something out, y’know?”

you’re both flushed, short of breath. but where there’s panic rising in tooru’s chest, you’re beginning to get angry. 

“like what, tooru? that i go with you and be your trophy wife? or we do long distance and never see each other?”

you take a step back, pressing your hands against your hot face, and release a breath to try and calm yourself. 

“tooru, i want to go to college,” you tell him, looking up at him with big eyes. 

“there’s plenty of colleges in argentina!”

“that’s not the point!” you burst, burying your face in your hands. “i just…why didn’t you ask me, tooru?”

“i…i don’t know,” he replies in a helpless whisper. “i want to keep playing volleyball. they scouted me, and it seemed like such a no-brainer, and i couldn’t pass it up, and i—”

your heart freezes to ice. “you already said yes?”

tooru’s eyes shrink to guilty pinpricks. it’s all the answer you need. 

you straighten, taking in a deep breath. you try to compose yourself, even though you feel utterly sick to your stomach. you will your eyes not to well up. 

“well, then i guess we’ll go our separate ways.”

the declaration hangs in the air for a moment, haunting and final.  

you’ve always been able to see past tooru’s facade, past the brave face he always puts on. he talks a big game, but he’s really quite fragile when it comes down to it. 

you see it in his face now, the way he’s practically gaping at you. he’s surprised. 

“you…what?” 

“i think we should go our separate ways, tooru. we obviously want different things, and i just don’t think we’ll be able to reach our goals if we stay together.”

you start to rethink everything as soon as the words leave your mouth, just because of the way he’s looking at you. a pit settles in your stomach as his big brown eyes bore into yours, the very picture of heartbreak. 

“you want to break up?”

“we knew this wasn’t going to last,” you reply quickly, resisting the tears pushing behind your eyes and trying desperately to swallow the lump in your throat. 

“i didn’t,” he whispers. “i didn’t know this wasn’t going to last.”

you clench your teeth and hang your head, a tear slipping down your cheek against your will. 

tooru hates seeing you cry. you hate when he sees you cry. that’s why you don’t hesitate to run into the safety of his arms when he opens them to you like you’re not breaking his heart. 

you feel guilty, traitorous as you burrow into the warmth of his strong torso. shame burns in your gut as the tears stream down your face. his arms are steady and strong around your body, hand warm as he cradles the back of your head.

“it’s okay,” he whispers, shushing you gently. “it’s okay. i love you. i thought i loved you enough for both of us, but it’s okay.”

“of course i love you!” you burst, lifting your head to look at him. you sniff, wiping your face as you disentangle yourself from his arms slowly. “i just…can’t follow you around for the entire rest of my life.”

tooru nods, arms fidgeting like he doesn’t know what to do with them when you’re not in them. 

“right. okay.”

you heave a sniffle, trying to compose yourself again. “when do you leave?”

“‘bout a month.”

“okay.” you inhale, exhale. “okay. well…i mean, until then..?”

“until then,” he agrees, offering you a half-hearted smile and his hand. of course, you take it. 

you’ve been dreading today for a month. it feels like it’s been marked on your internal calendar in big, fat, red letters. in actuality, you couldn’t even write it in your planner because it hurt too much. 

you offered to accompany tooru to the airport. he told you he’d be fine, you didn’t need to, but you had insisted. it was the least you could do after shattering his heart. 

so here you are, walking him up to the gate. neither of you have said much on the way up here. to be honest, neither of you have said much since that day you decided to end it with tooru’s departure to argentina. 

“this is me,” he says, gesturing to the gate behind you. you can hear the fragility behind his voice, that quaver only you’d notice. 

“right,” you say quickly, wringing your hands awkwardly. “well, good luck.”

you almost flinch. three years dating, ten years friendship behind it, and all you can say is good luck. 

“thanks,” he replies, but you know he’s thinking the same thing you are. 

“i mean…” you sigh, but no words come to you. you shake your head, pulling him into a hug instead. 

he’s shocked at first, you can tell by the way he tenses up. but it takes only a second for him to melt into your embrace and then he’s hugging you tighter than he has in your life. 

there’s really nothing else to say after that. you both separate after a small eternity and try not to cry as he heads for the gate. 

he pauses just before he walks through, looking back at you. 

“there’s nothing i can do to change your mind?”

you shake your head, shrugging helplessly. “i would never ask you to give up your dreams for me, tooru. but i can’t sacrifice mine just for your sake either.”

he nods solemnly, releasing a long breath. you can hear the slightest waver in his voice when he speaks. 

“i guess this is it, then.”

“yeah,” you agree, hugging the sleeves of your sweater. sincerity and heartbreak bleed through your voice. “goodbye, tooru. i hope it’s everything you ever dreamed of.”

he smiles softly at you, hanging off every word. 

“don’t forget about me when you’re rich and famous,” you say with a watery laugh, wiping tears from your cheeks.

tooru stares back at you with the most lovesick expression you’ve ever seen, longing and caring and warm and haunting all at the same time. 

“i could never forget you for as long as i live. and one day when i am rich and famous, i’ll come back for you.”

“riches and fame won’t get me back, tooru.”

“no,” he agrees. “but maybe seeing that i’ll wait for you will.”

and with that, he’s disappearing through the boarding tunnel with his bags. and then he’s gone like you had just dreamed him up, five seconds later and already a distant memory. 

his words ring in your head the entire way home as you stare out the window. 

they replay all over again, years later, when your phone lights up with a photo you treasure every day, a name you hear every night in your dreams. 

“hi, tooru.”

this got away from me. if this takes off and breaks ur hearts like it broke mine, i might consider a part two. oikawa is so special to me, pls you have no idea. he’s so 1989 coded too. i <3 soft angst. love and take care, - 𝚔𝚒𝚝𝚝𝚢

[gen-toon]

[devourable]

your first time • yanderes x reader, part one

nsfw, minors and ageless dni ;; smut (duh), virgin top x bottom gn reader, various kinks that will be tagged per character.

ft. abraham (yandere church boy), sterling (yandere prodigy), gene (yandere hacker), tobias and sebastian (yandere best friends), and mykolas (yandere monster)

this part will just be the guys (excluding the delinquents)! i wanted to put most of my polyamorous groups as well as the girls and enbies in part two. decided last minute to change it a bit and make it sort of ambiguous as to if the reader is a virgin or not. regardless!

thanks again for 2k 🫶

the church boy — abraham atkins ;; dacryphilia, elements of sizeplay, mentions of religion

abraham thought his first time would be well into the future, after he’d gotten married at his church and whisked off to start his own family like his father before him. it was just a part of life to him, not something to really care about or look forward to; but it was supposed to happen that way. but abe… he just couldn’t resist you!

he knew he shouldve stopped you the moment you had found yourself on his lap, pinning him to his bed after what was supposed to be an sleepover had gone completely off course. and he should’ve stopped you when you got your tongue in his mouth, grinded on him, getting him hard for practically the first time in his life. he should’ve stopped things before they went too far — but he couldn’t stop you. or himself, after he started to clumsily hump you back, his hands finding and delicately groping your ass in an attempt to figure out how he could fit against you best. abe has such an innocent hunger about him, he so desperately wants more — more what, exactly? he doesn't really know. you definitely end up having to take lead because he wholeheartedly doesn't know what he's doing.

but once you coax him out of his nerves and a bit of trial and error (he absolutely wouldn't have fit in you dry; and even after you taught him how to work you open and got his dick wet enough, it was still a tight fit!), you finally, finally get him inside you. and abe, poor abe didn't even know what hit him. despite the tears tumbling down his face purely from how good you felt around him, despite the deep rooted guilt of committing such a sin with the one he loved clawing at his chest, he couldn’t help how brutally he ended up fucking you. he’d pour out all of his pent up desire into you in one night, fucking you through climax after climax till you were seeing stars too.

the prodigy — sterling cygnus ;; overstimulation, risky(ish) setting/exhibitionism

it must all be a game to you, his feelings and this weird dynamic in your relationship. even when the two of you actually start dating (…sorta), he still had it in his head that you were just trying to fuck with him. what other reason could there be to explain how he felt aside from it being your fault?

it was when the two of you were in his dorm that he actually decided to push your boundaries, see what you would let him do before your ‘facade’ finally cracked. but you didn’t stop him when he pinned you against your bed, or when he started kissing you, or when the kiss transformed into an unintentionally heated makeout session. it wasn’t until you had started to pull off your shirt and palm at him through his pants that he started to think that you might’ve actually wanted him.

sterling didn’t really know how it went so far, but he stopped caring when the absolute carnal need to just feel you took over his brain. you must’ve assumed that he didn’t know how to make you feel good because he’s inexperienced, right? no? well, he doesn’t believe you. and to ensure you do, you’re not getting out of that dorm until he’s made you cum on him again, and again, and again. you’d have to think he’s playing with you at some point with how often he switches between fucking you and fingering you — he insists on making you cum both ways as many times as you can handle. he’s rattling the walls and got you sobbing his name so loud that no doubt the entire dorm can hear you (the walls were never that thick to begin with anyway). he relishes in not only knowing he’s completely claimed you, but now all of your colleagues will know too. he doesn’t care how much of a mess he’s making with your insides or how much of him spills out of you, nor does he care if you’re exhausted and sore from the waist down. you’re not done until he’s done with you — and being the overachiever he is, who knows when that’ll be? he’d hate to leave you thinking he’s anything but your number one.

the hacker — gene eliades ;; a lil dubcon-y, filming w/o reader’s knowledge

gene had waited for you to make a move on him first, he really did. he even tried enticing you in his own way, always sitting with his legs open so you could see the very clear outline of his dick through his pants, sitting you on his lap when he was working and keeping a hand on your body at all times. he’d kiss you, tell you how crazy you drove him, anything to give you an idea of what he wanted. but you never took that extra step and it left him wondering if it was because you were toying with him or if you really were that dense. either way, he had had enough, and after one particular day where the need burning in the pit of his stomach just wouldn’t go away, he decided that he wouldn’t wait anymore.

when you tried to slip off of his leg to do something, his arm curled around your waist and pulled you square into his lap, making sure you felt every inch of his erection against your ass. you were so irresponsible, constantly getting him riled up and never doing anything about it. did you even like him at all? regardless of your answer he was already sliding his hands under your clothes, groping your chest with one and working your bottoms down with the other.

it was unceremonious, the way gene bent you over his desk and buried himself up to the hilt in you before you could even voice any potential protests. but the feeling of him hitting all the right spots in you made your mind go blank, unable to do anything but moan his name every time he pulled you back against him. god, he loved hearing the way you whimpered for him, feeling you stretch around him when he fucked you just a bit too hard, the way your hips fit so nicely in his hands.

it was a good thing you were too fucked out to notice the little light next to his webcam aimed down at you. you wouldn’t mind if you did, he assumed — there was nothing wrong with wanting to remember this moment later, was there?

the boys next door — tobias & sebastian ;; double penetration, threesome

the pair had fantasized about losing their virginity to you years before it actually happened. the amount of times they’d gotten each other off with your name falling from their lips was too many to count, but god knows it just wasn’t enough for the two. but they never acted on those feelings, not until they had planned out the day to ensure it would be perfect.

you did find it a bit suspicious that the first time you were all free for the weekend at the same time was on the night that toby’s parents went out for an unplanned vacation, but you easily overlooked it when the pair offered you a sleepover (for old time’s sake!), bribed with promises of your favorite snacks and whatever movies you wanted to watch. you were sandwiched between the two in your best friend’s room, oh so aware of the growing tension but unsure where it was leading to — but then toby suddenly asked to kiss you. and what you assumed would be a playful peck ended with you pinned to the bed with tobias holding your wrists while sebastian made himself comfortable between your legs.

they really like you, and they know you like them too — you wanna be their first, don’t you? be their special someone? that’s what toby’s asking between kisses while seb’s lifting your shirt and sliding a hand down the front of your pants. it wasn’t until you finally gave them the permission they’d waited so long for that the pair allowed themself to really get the night started.

toby was the first to break you in while seb held you in his lap. it was a shame the pair didn’t think to record the moment… the face you made when toby fucked into you was so cute! and the noise you made when seb slid under you to try and squeeze into you alongside toby would play in their minds over and over again. they might’ve pushed you a bit too hard, stretching you well beyond your limit without even letting you catch your breath. they just couldn’t resist! you were clamping down on them, sucking them both in like you didn’t wanna let them go. it felt so good to make you cum.

the two were still up long after you had passed out, ogling your ruined state with an undeniable urge to fuck you up even more. they saw it like a badge of honor, proof that you’d always be theirs. the two would let you rest for the time being, but don’t worry — they still had an entire weekend with you ahead, and they didn’t plan on letting you step foot outside that house till their time was up.

the beast — mykolas ;; teratophilia (duh), size difference, outercourse/thighfucking

mykolas really, really didn’t want to hurt you. he was well aware of how big he was, especially compared to you — if you got hurt because he couldn’t control himself, he wouldn’t know what to do!

all of those thoughts were completely disregarded when he started rutting, though. the poor monster couldn’t think straight with his hormones running amok, and you being you — so soft, so small, so vulnerable, it was like you were designed to torture him through the season. you’d very quickly catch on to what was happening to your monstrous partner, considering you’d often be woken up by him grinding up against your back or stomach in a desperate bid to try and relieve the borderline painfully throbbing cock that was bothering him more and more these days. and though he’d never make his needs known vocally, you could just tell — that sad, pleading look he’d give you every time you looked at his pitiful form was just begging you to take care of him.

you knew for certain that you couldn’t just fuck him in his current state. his cock practically matched the length of your torso! and with how reckless his hormones were making him, the possibility of him ‘accidentally’ making you take more than you could handle was too high, even if you did try to take control. so to work around this problem, you opted to get a bit creative with your methods.

mykolas didn’t quite understand what was going on at first when you bent over in front of him, pants pulled down to your knees. but when you guided him between your legs and clamped your thighs around his length, you could tell the switch in his brain had flipped and he completely allowed instinct to take over. you had no clue just how good it’d feel when mykolas’s hard, wet cock rutted against you relentlessly until he was gripping your waist and pulling you against him, fucking your thighs like you were his living fleshlight. but fuck, the way he managed to slide against every sensitive spot he had access to despite his carnal state was nearly driving you insane. and mykolas delighted in the way you clawed at the ground and mewled for him, your voice so pretty when you stammered out his name. it didn’t take long for either of you to cum at that rate.

despite the mess mykolas made of your thighs and stomach, though, he wouldn’t let you get off him. he’d been pent up for so long, repressing his desire to mate with you, he couldn’t just stop there! so he went again, and again, humping you in any position he could think of, pinning you down, thoroughly wrecking you as best as he could. you were gonna be in for a rough mating season now that mykie knew how to relieve himself with you — but you didn’t mind, he assumed. you were the one that showed him how to feel better, after all.

[p0orbaby]

What are we? Alexia being a bit of commitment-phobe and not wanting to label an obvious relationship that everyone can see is happening. Decides to make things up and lie about their relationship to her mum and friends, which hurts her ‘not girlfriend’. But of Alexia having to win her back and show she wants to commit! Bit angsty but happy ending!

-

“We’re just keeping it casual,” Alexia says, with a shrug so nonchalant it could win an Oscar. You nearly choke on your drink. Casual. As though she hasn’t spent the past six months monopolising your bed and half your wardrobe, leaving her things scattered around your flat like you’re an exhibit in some weird, unofficial museum of her life.

“Right,” you mutter, stabbing your fork into a salad leaf with just a little too much enthusiasm. “Very casual. That’s why your mother keeps texting me recipes and calling me la nuera”

She laughs it off, the same easy, practiced smile she uses on journalists when they ask about her Ballon d’Or wins. “You know how my mami gets,” she says, as if her mami is the problem and not the fact that she still can’t seem to utter the word “girlfriend” without a nervous twitch.

The final straw is at dinner with her mates. “So, how long have you two been together?” someone asks, and Alexia—because she has all the emotional intelligence of a plank of wood—does that annoying little shrug again. “Oh, we’re just seeing where it goes.” You can practically hear the record scratch, and suddenly, the dessert menu in front of you is the most fascinating thing you’ve ever seen.

“Right,” you say again, this time out loud, because there’s only so much ambiguity a person can take before they start googling “how to remove yourself from a situationship.” You leave the restaurant half an hour later, and Alexia doesn’t realise what she’s done until you’re halfway out the door.

It takes her two weeks of radio silence and one panic-stricken midnight voicemail for her to show up at your place, all awkward smiles and rambling explanations about “not wanting to ruin a good thing” and “needing time to figure it out”

“Figure what out?” you ask, arms folded. “How to admit you’re in a relationship with me without spontaneous combustion?”

She fumbles, then finally blurts, “Okay, fine. I’m an idiot, but I’m your idiot. I just… didn’t want to mess things up by calling it something and then—”

“Mess things up?” You stare at her, incredulous. “Alexia, I’ve met your family. I’ve been to more team dinners than your manager”

“Exactly!” she exclaims, as if she’s stumbled onto the meaning of life. “So I’m saying it now, okay? You’re my girlfriend. Happy?”

You make her sweat a bit longer, though. Let her scramble through some grand gesture involving a bouquet that looks like it was ordered for a wedding. And when she finally introduces you to her mother—again, for the third time—as her girlfriend, you lean in and whisper, “Took you long enough”

Alexia just grins, and this time, there’s no shrugging.

[darlingdreadwrites]

I read your Toby fics, and I really love your writing:D

I see your open with requests and I wanted to ask a Toby x final girl reader?

They just kept fighting against him, and he somehow gained a crush on the person he is supposed to kill? It's fine if you don't ;D

I WAS SO EXCITED TO WRITE THIS I SQUEALED WHEN I READ IT!! i hope i do right by you, my lovely anon.

pairing: Ticci Toby x Final Girl F!Reader

summary: Toby thought you'd be an easy target since you were just a girl. He should've gone with the easy kill when he had the chance.

contains: getting chased by a man wielding two hatchets, slight pov switches but it's still in second person, idk what else to put

warning: violence, gore (more like imagery is gore-y), MEAN TOBY, reader gets hurt, toby gets hurt, me not knowing how to write fight/tense scenes and the logistics that go with them, barely any talking cuz i think toby would be too embarrassed by his stutter

word count: 1.6k

masterlist

a.n: when i read final girl in the request, i pictured reader wearing those outfits that female japanese horror game protags wear (picture fatal frame). i’m gonna keep the end ambiguous for you because my freak brain wants it all to work out perfectly for them, but the other part of my brain wants to keep it realistic cuz there’s no way in HELL i’d let someone forcing me to run live. if you want me to continue where i left off i’d be so glad to (and you can pick whichever type of “route” you want). ENJOY!!

The cool, night air gave you chills all over as your feet pounded against the soft forest floor under your feet. With every quick step you took, another short burst of breath escaped your lips. It felt like you were being pushed back by a sudden gust of wind, but the trees continued to look blurry in the corners in your eyes, and that was a good thing. You kept your pace – even if it felt like the breeze kept poking needles into the cuts on your skin.

You had decided to actually dress up today but stayed mindful enough for the fall weather. So, you weren’t exactly dressed for the occasion. Maybe next time you decide you want to get attacked by some psycho swinging hatchets; you’ll be a little more fucking prepared. 

The whistling of said hatchet reminds you of why you were running. The sound of his weapon whirred by as it lodges itself deep into the bark of a tree. It’s already behind you as your mind yelled at your body to keep up. His other hatchet thwacks into a tree too close to your head and you scream involuntarily. You stumble to a stop stupidly, stabilize yourself, and drag your body to pivot and sprint to the right.

You weren’t sure how long you could keep going. But - as much as your lungs burned - that buzz that came from fighting for your life nagged at you like a bitch. You don’t care how much your body hurts because you will deal with the consequences later.

You’re not going to let yourself die.

Toby grunted as frustration and anger seethed in his veins. Wrapping his hands around the handle of his hatchet, he kept his eyes trained on you as he struggled to pull the thing free. He’d all but forgotten that the other one was a few feet away. He wasn’t normally fond of losing his favorite toys. He wouldn’t lose you either.

You were a stupid, stupid girl, after all.

His head violently twitched to the side compulsorily when he finally dislodged his weapon. A few wood chips flew out and landed on the muddy leaves below. He stood there, taking and letting out deep breaths.

He thinks about what might be going through your mind as you keep running. Maybe about how you were gonna get out of here, call the pigs, and have some nurse tend to the wounds he gave you. He smiled and tightened his grip on his hatchet as he fantasized about your naïve hope. He knew these woods like the back of his hand.

You wouldn’t make it out of here in one piece.

You slow down as the structure of a house comes into view. It fits the eerie atmosphere perfectly – chipping paint, broken windows. You’re not here to admire the neglected building, though, and you stomp up the small steps. The door lets out a low groan as you practically shove it open using your shoulder.

Slamming it behind you, your head whips around for the exit or some type of weapon. In the distance, you can hear the shrill whistle of the man outside, an involuntary thing, you’ve noticed. Just how long have you been fighting this freak? Enough to learn his quirks, that’s for sure. 

Delving deeper into the house with hurried steps, you look around for a kitchen. Find a weapon, find a weapon, you repeat to yourself, the sound of your quick gasps filling your ears. You catch yourself on the doorway when you almost rush past it.  

You barely stepped foot into the room before crying out when you felt something make impact with your back. The dull, heavy pressure sends painful shockwaves through you. Having the wind knocked out of you, the muscles in your back spasm and you buckle forward. He shoves you, and you wheeze as the edge of the rusted stove in front of you digs painfully into your stomach.

Your eyes immediately land on a cast iron skillet, and you think you have less than three seconds. You smash the pan against the side of his head, your grunt and the metal clang the only sounds in the room. You were confused as to why he wasn’t yelling out in pain. But your arms jerked upward, the heavy iron bludgeoning into his chin and he stumbles back.

Toby can hear the ringing in his ears with each blow to his head, his world spinning for far too long than he would’ve liked. He snarls and grabs your arm, throwing you in the direction of a wall hard - causing you to drop your makeshift weapon.

He looks at you, at how your legs shake as you try to steady the world around you. Look at you - you looked like a fawn. With your wide eyes and trembling form. Guess he’ll be your coyote, right? He’d sink his teeth into the side of your neck and stain his maw with your crimson flood. You were just pretty enough that he couldn’t wait to watch your eyes roll back when he greedily kept the air from inflating your lungs.

No, but you weren’t a fawn, were you? He’d seen more fight in you than any of the losers he was tasked to kill. They sobbed – they fucking begged on their hands and knees – to keep him from tearing them limb by limb. You were stronger than he thought you’d be, but you weren’t as agile as he was, he thought.

His face stretched as another wide, sinister grin spread across his face. His gloved hand tightened around the hatchet’s handle. He could hear the leather creak if he focused on anything other than your breathing.

You duck and stumble out of the way as you hear the spitting of wood above your head. He yells out a loud “fuck!” and attempts to yank the weapon free. You run out of the room and almost collide with another wall. You pivot on your heel because there was no way you’d run away from the front--

Gasping, you caught your balance before you could fall through the gaping hole on the floor. No time to jump, you told yourself, and you spun once again. Sprinting down the hall, you were met with the door to a room rather than any kind of exit.

You’d remember to set this house on fire when you made it out alive.

The room stunk of decaying carcasses and a thick powdery smell – the former outperforming the latter. You make your way to a second door and find yourself in a bathroom. You think there’s nothing here heavy enough to hurt him until your eyes land on a towel rod that hung loosely from the wall.

With a determined tug it comes out and you know he heard it. You can tell by the way you hear his heavy boots scramble in the direction of the room. You take a deep gulp of air and press your back against the wall next to the door.

The air was heavy with tension as the door creaked open. His shadowy figure stretched on the floor, and he walked right in. Would he turn around? Would he sense where you were before it was too late?

While he twisted around, you slam the rod into the side of his head. He’s disoriented for a moment, his head rolling to the side. Before he could react, you lifted your right leg, and the bottom of your shoe made contact with his stomach – sending him hurtling back.

Toby lets out a groan as he loses his balance and falls into a tub. His limbs sprawl out, legs and arms dangling from the sides. He attempts to move when a raw, guttural scream that causes his chest to tighten makes him stop. His eyes dilate as he stares at you wildly. Something about your scream has shaken him to his core. His head was still dizzy and a little numb from the force of your hit. And yet he couldn’t help but admire your resilience. He should be livid – breaking all your fingers and pulling your pretty little teeth out of your mouth one by one.

The man’s tics overtook him, his eyelids squeezed shut with a sudden intensity. He opens them again, and you’re still rooted in the same spot – breathing heavily. He’d never seen a girl look as hot as you did right now. He didn’t think that was even possible in your state. Your clothes, hair, and face were caked in mud and blood from your gashes. A girl like you should’ve been screaming in pain and crying for her mommy. But you stared at him with a burning defiance that caused his heart to pound violently against his chest.

His hatchet lay at your feet, and he realized that you had gotten him. You won. He could try attacking you again – he was bigger than you – but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He can’t fight back anymore; he just stares in what he can only assume is awe. Years of taking lives and witnessing more gore than anyone ever should, could not have prepared him for this moment. You didn’t stop – you just couldn’t. It was… admirable. Beautiful, even, if he was a more sentimental person.

You piqued his curiosity like nobody had ever done before. He wanted to know what made you tick. He wanted to study every movement, sound, and judgement you’d ever make. You could break all the bones in his body, and he’d come running back to watch you do it again when the Operator put him together again.

You astonished him.

So, what’ll you do now?

[satosugusandwich]

His Angel and His Brat

Part 1!!! Part 2

Hard!Dom!Geto x Brat!Gojo x obedient!afab!reader

(I also try to write my fics to be racially ambiguous! No mention of skin tone or hair type!)

Summary: Gojo is a mega-brat to y/n and Suguru and likes to push buttons cuz he can so Suguru decides to overstimulate Gojo until he thinks he’s broken. (Key word: thinks.) To add to Gojo’s humiliation, he ensures that the reader is getting princess treatment while watching Gojo suffer endlessly. But, of course, things don’t always go as planned with Satoru Gojo.

CW and whatnots: Overstimulation, vibrators, cuffs, finger sucking, condescending!geto, usage of the word “cock”, gojo’s boundless stamina and cocky attitude, anal play, cum licking (off the floor and gojos pp) praise, cocksucking, angel ass reader that ends up in trouble cuz gojo can’t shut his mouth, geto is actually so mean to gojo but so soft cuz he’s actually a teddy bear dw. Use of “brat, princess, angel.” There will be aftercare in future parts cuz imagine leaving pathetic satoru a cum drenched mess. Poor baby. :(((

There will be additional tags in future parts. This is how I cope with ch 236.

Suguru runs his thumb along your bottom lip, licking his own lips while you whimper. Your pretty eyes fixated on his blushing face and half-lidded eyes. He looks at you with so much lust and is so gentle with you, just so in love with how much you please him and how willing you are to do what he wants. You eagerly await him and his orders, always ready to obey.

But.

“Suguru!”

Satoru’s cry makes his face go from pure admiration to utterly sadistic. “Satoru.” He says, looking at the man to the right of you, the same man that’s panting and whining as the vibrator in his tight hole runs relentlessly. “Jealously doesn’t look very good on you.” He grins and hits a button on the small remote he holds in his hand that isn’t occupied with your mouth.

“Fuck—FUCK!” Satoru’s eyes clench shut, the whirring sound coming from his bottom getting faster and bit more high pitched. You’re grateful you aren’t in his position, you don’t know if you could handle Suguru having full control of how much pleasure you get to feel. Especially if that pleasure is ongoing… and nonstop.

Satoru looked unusually pathetic and… weak. It’s insane to think that the so called strongest sorcerer, the cocky, the arrogant, the man on top, bends to the will of his pretty best friend. Suguru’s change in character comes as a shock too. The sweet, soft-spoken, gentle, and empathetic sorcerer is now grinning down at his partner, showing no mercy, no kindness, and is only sending Satoru into deeper throes of overwhelming pleasure. You almost didn’t want to look at Satoru, what if Suguru surmised you wanted the same treatment. Would he show you mercy?

“Now, now,” Suguru muses, “if you can beg me properly, I’ll stop your torment. And of course you’ll need to apologize to Y/n and I for being such an impatient little shit.” He chuckles softly and withdraws his thumb from your mouth. “She’s being so well-behaved while you whine and whine and cry and cry about how much it is.” He mocks him, furrowing his eyebrows together in a false pity. “I suppose I should expect it, after all, you’ve cum how many times? That pressure against—“ Suguru crouches as he speaks “—your prostate—“ he runs the tip of his fingers up Satoru’s base “—it’s been nonstop for 30 minutes now.”

You can’t help but watch as Suguru’s hand starts to stroke Satoru now, giving expert attention to his neglected yet tortured cock. Suguru notices how you eyeball his actions and can’t help but smile wider.

“Ah, do you feel left out?” His false pity changes back to his gentle expression. “It’s alright, princess, why don’t you show Satoru how impressed you are with his stamina. Give him a little reward?”

Suguru is evil.

“I don’t think he could take it, Sugu.” You answer honestly.

He looks a bit disappointed but he relents his ministrations. “I suppose you’re right. But he still owes us an apology before his punishment ends.”

You nod and meet Satoru’s eyes. He can barely speak as his next orgasm approaches. “I-I’m so—“ his body is shaking. “I’m so sorry! I’ve been so—Suguru—so impatient! Please, I’m so so soo!!! So sorry!” He’s almost in tears now, you can tell Suguru is even beginning to feel pity for his best friend and his brat.

“Ahh… cum one more time and I’ll take it out. Show me you deserve mercy by pleading. Plead for mercy.” Suguru’s fingers tug at your nipples now, clearly losing interest in Satoru’s torment. You know that you aren’t being punished, but seeing Suguru like this… makes you a little weary.

“Please please!” Satoru repeats the word over and over. “I’m so sorry! Please, mercy!” He keeps prattling on, thrusting into the air as he struggles to keep together.

“Y/n.” Suguru looks to you. “Clean up his next mess for me. Lick his cock clean and then it’ll be your turn.”

Satoru starts to mumble and moan out different variations of thank yous and Suguru’s name as he reaches his final high. And when he cums, It’s a mess. Semen spills from his cock and your immediately there to catch it. Suguru’s eyes widen, absolutely loving your eagerness to take his cum down your throat.

“Good boy, good girl.” He pets your head and clicks the toy off, causing Satoru’s to collapse completely, his body weight bearing into the now standing legs of Suguru. He catches his breath, still whimpering as Suguru pets his head. Satoru looks you in the eyes, his beauty keeping your gaze fixated on his body. His six eyes are a little red, probably from the tears that he held back, and his body is flushed beautifully, his pretty cock slowly going soft as he does his best to calm down.

Satoru relaxes back on his knees while Suguru goes behind him to remove the toy from his ass and undo Satoru’s hand cuffs. You breathe a sigh of relief for him, always impressed by Satoru’s unwavering stamina and attitude. You wondered how Satoru enjoyed pissing Geto off so much, does he really enjoy these punishments that much? Suguru seemingly loves the after effects of a good punishment, his adoration of Satoru is evident in the way he kisses his head and gently rubs his back while Satoru regains his strength.

As much as you love watching, you are wondering why Suguru invited you to observe Satoru’s punishment. You’re not really complaining and it definitely isn’t the first time you’ve seen it, but, all you’ve had is a thumb in your mouth and a little bit of cocksucking. After all, Suguru can’t ever stay entirely focused on Satoru, he needs some pleasure himself.

Satoru seems to be wondering the same thing. “So, baby, why did you bring her in to watch?” He asks, rising from his knees to give them a break.

Suguru looks down at you. “Just on a whim.” He strokes your face before looking back toward his brat. “And I’ve noticed you get more worked up with an arousing audience.”

“Well, wouldn’t you if she was licking your cum from the floor?” Satoru grumbled, sitting on the bed.

Suguru turns his attention back toward you. “She does love cum in her mouth.” He strokes himself slowly, catching your attention.

“I want yours next.” You tell him, shifting your weight and sending him a smile.

Satoru watches as you lean forward to lick Suguru’s cock, taking his precum on your tongue. He doubt he could handle anymore cumming, but he certainly loves to see you take cock down your throat. If he had more energy, he’d love to stuff his down as well. “Like it that much, y/n?” He chuckles.

Suguru’s eyes shoot to Satoru. “Jealous again, Satoru?? Well, the question is are you jealous cuz my cock is down her throat or are you jealous cuz it’s not down your throat?”

Satoru sucks his teeth. “I want to watch her take me balls deep.”

Uh oh.

Suguru removes his cock from your mouth. “Satoru,” you start, “I don’t think you have enough energy to keep that attitude up.” Indeed, his stamina is incredible.

Suguru waits to see his reaction.

And of course, the other man grins and only adds fuel to the fire. “Think she’d look better with my cock in her mouth. She’s been paying more attention to me than you anyways.”

“Satoru…” you sigh and in seconds Suguru has him pressed back into the bed and is beckoning for you to get on with him.

Satoru laughs. “Aw, did I bruise your ego, baby? What are you gonna do about it?”

Suguru points to his mouth. “Sit on him to shut him up and I’ll give him a nice view of my cock in your mouth.”

Fuck, that sounds hot. Satoru just grins and motions for you to ride his face, pointing at his eager tongue that’s already out and waiting.

“Y/n, make sure he stays quiet I don’t want to hear him make a single peep. And since he likes being punished so much, I’ll punish you instead if he speaks.”

What?

You blink. Undeniably aroused but a bit scared of his now very evident sadism. “You know he’s going to try to speak now on purpose?” Mercy isn’t exactly his thing right now but you’ll pry at it for sure.

Suguru gives you an evil grin as you lower your weeping pussy onto Satoru’s face. “Then keep his mouth shut.”

[hannibals-favourite-meal]

Caught at the last second with Clark Kent?

.⋆｡The Fall｡⋆.

Clark Kent x plus size reader

Faced with a choice between you and Lois, Clark has to decide who lives and who dies

Warnings: angst, fear of heights, literally a life and death situation guys, unrequited love (maybe), vivid imagery of drowning, kind of ambiguous but happy ending (you’ll see) WC: 1.1k

6k Follower Celebration Bingo

Library- @hannibals-favourite-meal-library

“Isn’t this a predicament Superman? Your ex-lover and your best friend in such precarious situations, across the globe from each other. You’ll only have time to save one of them.” The LEDs of the monitors behind Luther seared into Clarks eyes but he refused to look away. Already his muscles were tensed, ready to dart away at any moment. “I wonder which one you will choose, I know which one I would.” 

Luther smirked, eyeing the monitor that clearly displayed your panicked face as you struggled against the chains wrapped tightly around your soft body. “She is quite the fighter, isn’t she?”

“Why are you doing this Luther?” The man rolled his eyes, finally turning to look at Clark.

“Why wouldn’t I? You are a nuisance, self-righteous, and aggravatingly nosy. If I kill one of them, and I will, I think you’ll learn your lesson. So, here we are. Lois Lane, the only woman you have ever loved, suspended over a cliff somewhere in Europe,” Luther gestured to the image of Lois, her head raising as his voice repeated over the feed and Clark realised that they could both hear what was happening, “and your best friend. The woman who has never stopped supporting you, somewhere in the Pacific with an anchor attached to her, I’m sure you can imagine what her fate is.” The man had the audacity to laugh then, as your expression fell and you stopped struggling.

“You don’t have to do this Luther. Just let them go and I’ll spare you.” 

Lex hummed. “You know, you’re right. This is quite boring by my standards, let’s shake it up.” Suddenly, a ground of masked men surrounded you, briefly blocking the camera before there was a scuffle and the feed cut off. Before Clark could react, another camera turned on, showing the criss-crossing metal beams of a crane as cables in the background shifted in the high winds. “Give them a minute, would you? Not all of us can move so quickly.” 

“I’m going to rip you apart, molecule by molecule.” Red creeped into Clark’s vision, slowly casting a haze of rage over everything.

“Now, if you kill me, you won’t get a hint as to where your women are. So be a good boy and watch. Ah, there she is.” Two men had you by your arms as they dragged you through the crane’s walkway, your eyes squeezed shut. Clark knew how badly you hated heights, descending into panic attacks if he even mentioned taking you out on a flight. His chest burned with fear. “And now, we have a level playing field. So, who are we picking?”

Your chains were thrown onto the edge of the structure, almost out of the camera’s line of sight, the huge iron anchor balancing treacherously by your feet. 

“Kal!” His eyes darted over to the second monitor where Lois was now fighting against a pulley that was quickly tugging her towards a sheer cliff face. Only her hands were bound by thick rope but he knew that as soon as her full body weight pulled on it, the rope would snap. 

“What’s the hint?” He snarled, ripping his gaze back to Lex Luther who was now beaming.

——————

The cold wind was like knives against your exposed skin, cutting into every nerve on your body. You desperately prayed that you would go numb soon, not wanting your last moments on this Earth to be ones full of pain. Your nails bit into the palms of your hands as another gust of wind made the crane groan and sway. It was all you could do not to scream.

Yet you kept your mouth firmly shut because you knew that if you said or did anything now, it would only feed into Clark’s guilt. He was going to pick Lois and you wanted to give him peace of mind. You forced your eyes open to watch the sunset. Your death would not be quick, even with the dizzying height, it would not be enough to kill you. Instead, you would be dragged to the depths as salt water filled your lungs and your screams forcefully ripped from you.

You wouldn’t blame Clark as you sank, you hope that you could instead think about his smile as the dim light above you disappeared into the blue.

You would not tell him that you loved him, refused to leave that weight on his soul when he already carried so much pain within him. But you would imagine a life with him, a kid, maybe two in a small townhouse somewhere quiet, as the pressure and cold consumed you. 

Lois’s voice crackled through the intercom by your head, distorted and warped. A band of fear wrapped tightly around your chest, pressing down harder than the metal chain keeping your arms pinned to your sides. You forced yourself to breathe in the salty air, knowing that it could be your last.

“I’ll be ok Clark, don’t worry about me. Just be happy, that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.” And as the sun dipped below the horizon, you let your eyes shut again, your entire body relaxed. “I’ll be ok.”

Metal scrapped against metal. You were pulled forwards. 

The wind screamed.

You could see the vivid blue of his eyes.

You were weightless.

You could hear his laughter.

The chains rattled.

You saw the moment you met him; the rain around you, a single umbrella between you.

The sound of waves crashing was getting closer. 

He was always so kind, so warm. You never knew a man better than him. 

Gravity slammed into you, knocking a pained cry from your lips. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.” Warmth enveloped you as something crashed into the ocean, droplets of water splashing against your ankles. Your cheek was pressed against something hard as a loud, frantic beating filled your ears. “You’re safe.”

Soft fabric wrapped around you, soothing the burn of your skin. Shakily, you reached up, your limbs stiff and aching. “Clark?” With all the strength you had left, you opened your eyes.

You were barely 5 feet up front the ocean swell, a hazy ring of bubbles below you was the only indication that something had been dragging you down at all. Clark was indeed there, holding you tightly to his chest as a huge abandoned oil rig loomed behind him, half of it on fire. His eyes were wide, fearfully examining every inch of your body before his shoulders drooped and he sighed in relief.

“No broken bones or internal bleeding. Thank god.” His lips descended onto your forehead, pressing kiss after kiss to your cold skin.

“You picked me?” He pulled away only enough to look into your eyes. 

“I always will.” A hand cupped the back of your neck, drawing your face upwards. Your lips parted as he glanced at them. “I will do anything to keep you safe.”

And as the fires behind him, Clark finally kissed you, washing away the smell of blood and screams of pain that he had inflicted upon those who took you from him. No one would ever hurt you again.

DC Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Join my taglist!

All works

@im-a-slut-for-fluff @alexxavicry @ravenwings73 @avada-kedavra-bitch-187 @silverfire475 @psychadelichues @mvyalx @faefanatic @evansqueen54 @anamiad00msday @th3sloth @princess76179 @Lanielagenev @luvvvjada @Lucypaulette @midnight-shadow-va @mooniequeen @slutfor-fictionalmen @km-ffluv @black-rose-29 @minedofmoria @relatednative

DC

@snedhdh @blackhawkfanatic @8bookishworm8 @honkytonkbabe @kobaltdragon  @amarillyssnowdrop 

[bluessmutifyplaylist]

i am in desperate need of smutty lilia and idia x reader in which it ends up with taking their cocks and giving up on gaming

I don’t really know what this was saying, so I decided to do my own interpretation? I also decided to leave them separate?

Warnings: 18+, Gender-Ambiguous!Reader, oral (character receiving)/blowjob, under the desk situation, pre-established relationship, subby!Idia, dom!Lilia (you give him a blowjob while he’s unmuted… so public?)

Idia Shroud

“Just one more game…” You let out another sigh as you laid on his bed. He said that so many times since you arrived at Ignihyde. You were feeling needy… horny… and attention-starved. So what did you do? You got an idea.

While Idia was locking in on his game, you sneakily got down on the floor and crawled underneath his desk. You were careful to not disturb him… until you put your hands on his thighs.

He yelped slightly in surprise, and when he looked under his desk and saw you with that sinister… sexy grin… he’s only ever seen this happen in porn videos! “W-What are you doing?!” His hair went bright red, as did his face, and his stuttering only got worse when you pulled down his sweatpants. 

You always knew that Idia was on the bigger side… always giving big-dick-loser energy… but damn. It was on the limper side right now, but it still had some heft to it. Taking it into your hand, you were able to feel it twitch… and damn if it didn’t make your mouth water.

“P…P-Please…” His whimpers as you started pumping your hand turned you on. He was lucky to have his mic muted… but he already died in-game. It didn’t matter, though, because his significant other was currently jerking him off.

Leaning forward, you put his tip against your tongue, and you would have thought that Idia saw the Heavens. As you started sucking, you were basically taking his soul with it. It took a bit of work to adjust to his size, and you knew your jaw was going to be sore… but his moans were worth it.

Swirling your tongue on the tip before diving in… it tasted not at all like you expected. He definitely kept himself cleaned… maybe he was preparing for something like this to happen. Your mouth started filling with saliva to accommodate for his size, and that’s when he started thrusting.

“Oh, fuck…”

He gripped the arms of his chair as his hips started moving up, jerking his cock into your mouth. It wasn’t choking you… it was actually quite pleasant as you got to really enjoy the taste of his precum. 

It wasn’t long until he was busting a load into your mouth. A raspy whimper, and you felt your mouth be filled with warm cum. It was fairly sticky going down, and it had a somewhat salty taste. It wasn’t surprising, given his poor diet, but it wasn’t absolutely horrible.

Licking your lips and smiling, you look up at Idia, and he was panting as he released his grip on his chair.

Lilia Vanrouge

The second you crawled under his desk, he knew what you were doing. He didn’t even give you the courtesy of him muting himself. Everyone in the chat was going to hear him praising you while you suck his cock.

As you unzipped his pants, you were teasing him about how it probably looked ancient… only to be met with a very hard, very angry-looking dick… and your mouth immediately wanted it in your mouth.

“Are you going to be a good Prefect and suck the General off?” He tilts his head with a smirk, muting his computer. Never in this time did he mute his mic.

You had no idea what sorcery he was using… but quicker than you can say “Grimm’s annoying”, you had Lilia’s cock in your mouth.

There must have been an aphrodisiac in the air because you nearly immediately became cockdrunk. Within five minutes, you were drooling over Lilia’s cock. He had his hand on the back of your head as he thrust into your mouth, making you choke.

His member hit the back of your throat as he kept thrusting, and he chuckled lowly as he saw you struggling for air. “Are you about to tap out, Prefect? Is that perfect little mouth of yours growing tired? Oh, you poor dear… Perhaps you ought to let me take care of it…” He giggled softly as he held you still while he continued thrusting into your mouth, not letting you take a break until he was shooting his cum down your throat, forcing you to swallow all of it.

“I hope I wasn’t away too long…” He said into his mic as he resumed his game, much to your dismay… and arousal.

[hacash]

See, I’m less annoyed than a lot of people because to me that last montage felt more like a dream of Ted’s than anything else. And don’t forget, Bill Lawrence has pulled this before: with the finale of Scrubs we don’t talk about Scrubs Interns JD’s final moments involve him imagining what the future looks like for him, and it’s up to the audience to decide how much or how little will come true. It’s left very ambiguous what the canonical future holds for our heroes - which, let’s be honest, is a pretty Ted Lasso move to pull. After all, we never can tell.

But once you consider that, the montage makes a lot more sense if you read it happening in Ted’s mind. It’s all very Ted-coded, showing everything he wants for his England family: the team all hanging out together. Trent’s book as a success but not making Ted front and centre. Keeley pushing for a women’s team. Sam making the Nigerian team. Roy taking his first steps as a proper leader. Nate back on the coaching squad and getting on better with his dad. Jamie reconciling with his dad (that’s very Ted-coded). Beard’s ludicrously filtered wedding to Jane (which Ted doesn’t even appear in, because we never see ourselves in our own dreams).

(And let me tell you, even if nothing else is fantasy that definitely was; having lived near Stonehenge for over ten years I can guarantee you the weather is never like that.)

I suspect that executive meddling has a lot to do with it - it’s pretty clear that a lot of people involved with Ted Lasso don’t know whether that’s it for the Richmond universe or not - but the fact that we end that montage with Ted jerking awake really has me feeling like that was a serious case of Ambiguous Ending. Until anything else in the Richmond universe is confirmed , we’re left able to pick and choose which bits will come true and which won’t. Which, hey, I’m a bit of a sucker for, so I’m satisfied with that.

[thealogie]

picture this. you're michael sheen, beloved queer-friendly welsh actor and recent twilight saga vampire. you want your favorite book to become a tv show, and you want to be the lead. so what do you do? you befriend the author. he wines and dines you, you become a confidant in the scriptwriting phase. and in the process of the GO script you decide you don't want to be crowley, actually, you want to be aziraphale. you put in the work for months to influence the author to the same conclusion. so when neil gaiman comes to you one day saying, "i know you joined on to be crowley... but how would you feel about playing aziraphale?" you say, what a novel idea! i was feeling the same way, i just didn't want to say anything! let's do it.

you're michael sheen, the lead in the adaptation of your favorite book. you meet david tennant as your leading man, a rising star (and vocal fan of yours) you've had a few vague interactions with in the past. on set you immediately find the closest friend you have ever and will ever find in your life, and you know this. the romance you have in your (yes, your) show is ambiguous, but you're michael sheen. you think that romance needs to be explicit. so what do you do? you become a nightmare on set. you get really hands-on; you make costume choices, you make story decisions, you tell your author friend at the very end of filming: aziraphale is in love with crowley and realizes it in 1941. now go do it again.

so the author goes and does it again. you get a season 2. you get 1941 part 2. you're michael sheen, and you are the lead of the adaptation of your favorite book, and the romance you littered into the character you built from the ground up has become unambiguous. everything goes according to plan. but, you see, you have a problem: the author you have baby trapped is acting a FIEND on twitter and tumblr. he's saying everything he can to imply aziraphale and crowley aren't sexually attracted to each other. he's getting a bit too bold with his character assumptions, is all i'm saying. so here's what you're going to do: you play it up with your pal david tennant. you made a show with him during lockdown. you're going to depict your lives as even more intertwined and homoerotically codependent as previously possible. you grow even closer. your wives become best friends, too, because how could they not? this has been the plan since the beginning, too. your lockdown show ends. it wasn't enough.

so you, michael sheen, of course you put in the work. if david tennant's there, you're damn sure you're there physically, spiritually, biblically, in whatever capacity you can be. it's not hard. david tennant is a big fan of yours, after all, so he MAKES SURE you're always in the conversation. you have him wrapped around your little finger, this lovely little boy, and so you know what you do next? you become neighbors. you make your directorial debut casting your best friend's wife watching her husband and male neighbor initiate sex with each other. you play into the swinging rumors (that you, michael sheen, had started). you create a narrative that you and david tennant are two homoerotic besties, and is there more going on in the background there? any deeper conspiracy? who really knows, but what you do know is that the world is talking about it.

and you, michael sheen, your entire acting career has led to this moment, your gay quips, your oscar wilde sex scene (and the interviews following), all of your queer roles, EVERYTHING has brought us to this conclusion. you have created the lab perfect conditions where season 3 must have an explicit gay sex scene. i'm sorry neil, my hands are tied! the people are clamoring for me and david tennant to have sex-- i mean aziraphale and crowley to have sex, the public decided this all on their own! i really don't think you have much choice. but of course, i would never deign to tell an author how to practice his veritable craft. i concede to whatever version of series 3 you create, and i will happy to bring this beloved character to his deserved ending.

and why do you say this? because you're michael sheen. you're just an actor who incidentally stumbled his way into leading the queer romance adaptation of your favorite book that wasn't a romance, and you just read the script the way that it was given to you. and if series 3 means an explicit sex scene between you and your best friend david tennant, then what a lovely coincidence that you had absolutely no part in making happen. because what power do you really have?

This is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year. A rare occasion where the author pulls off use of the second person pov. I really felt like I was a beloved welsh actor crossed with Machiavelli when I read this

[forestleavescat]

Moominvalley: Or Not at All

A long post about Moominvalley through the different seasons. Planning, potential, promises, and outcomes.

This won’t go super far into detail about season 4 but it will talk about a certain outcome as well as handling of characters and relationships. If you don’t want any spoilers or info on the fourth season steer clear

(I’m not the best with titles)

I watched season 4 of moominvalley last night and I was pretty dang disappointed in how certain things were handled. Don’t get me wrong. There was some nice stuff. But it still felt like it was largely missing what made me love the show so much from the start. As well as things I had been looking forward to from the books. Above all else, I feel like their handling of the fandom’s favorite pairing was bad. I can’t even begin to put into words how upset I am since gutsy and by extension moominvalley felt like a company that wouldn’t do this. I want to put my thoughts on paper so to speak. 

It’s insanely disappointing to know that this company has been queerbaiting since day one. This show is a huge comfort to me and it was nice to watch since it helped me feel more at ease with my own sexuality. But now that feeling has been largely reversed because I know that those moments were manufactured to sell the show only for them to drop them by the end. So let’s look at things

Queer coding has existed for a long time. It’s helped creators give hints and nods to a character’s identity or hints of a relationship when times and places don’t exactly allow for it. There are many stories that have queer coding and give this beautiful subtext that those in the community can enjoy. Even though it would remain ambiguous whether a character was gay or two men or women were dating, the coding allowed it to be suggested even when it wasn’t allowed given the time period. 

Queerbaiting is almost the opposite of this. Queerbaiting comes about more from existing in a time or place where it is accepted but instead of giving genuine representation, a person uses the desire to see that representation to sell a product. Moments between characters that are clearly more than friendship only to disappear - often replaced by a hetero pairing. (Tbf the character who was implied to have feelings for someone of the same gender would still be bi or pan but it stings when the idea of something between two people of the same gender was suggested but removed) Queerbaiting has been an extremely frustrating thing to experience in fandom spaces. Series like voltron, sherlock, supernatural, etc. You get invested in these characters. There’s a possibility and every moment that suggests it could be more gets you hooked. Similar to how miraculous viewers became invested in the romance that’s hinted since day one. If you put the time and effort into using that for a story and draw people in with it only to take it away it’s bordering false advertising. It sucks because you spent time caring about it and waiting to see how it would play out. 

I mean just look at this. The moominvalley team did this deliberately. I mean, they included that one scene in the teaser which made it seem like more snufmin. It felt like a taste of what the season would offer but in reality it was one of few crumbs. And I mean crumbs. Because compared to the other seasons there was hardly anything. Their moments didn’t have this underlying feeling that they usually did. Every other season felt like it had underlying feelings to be explored. But here it became hollow. And snufkin took a backseat to a lot of the action this season

 But they definitely knew that the fans were interested in this pairing. It’d be tough to get into the moomins without knowing about this part of the story and community. And they acknowledged this idea of moomin and snufkin multiple times in interviews and qnas. 

And voice actors aren’t the ones who decide but there were more than just vas discussing this.

This series started off with their relationship. Episode one ended with the first mention of snufkin who’d be returning to the valley in the very next episode. That entire second episode gave a clear look into how their relationship would develop throughout the series. Moomin waiting for snufkin longingly while snufkin took his time until showing up felt right all while missing moomintroll. This episode has a sort of sense that there could be something more to them. Especially seeing as moomin is more focused on snufkin than snorkmaiden, his love interest. The following episode gives us this:

And while moomin wants the dragon to be his loyal pet, we know that “And just promise me this, that you'll give me all your kisses Every winter, every summer, every fall”

is referring to somebody other than that. This leaned much heavier into the potential for something beyond friendship between them.

There are the usual moments that could go either way, with focus between them and close contact.

This is more similar to other adaptations where they have a clear, close relationship. But in most of those you could come to love the pairing but you generally know they won’t do something unambiguous. Just the occasional scene that could be read as potentially romantic.

Moominvalley doesn’t strictly stick to this though. It feels similar to the original works where there is something ambiguously there. Then it further implies that there will be something important between them storywise. You get Tooticky saying that there are other lost souls waiting to be heard before the camera cuts to Snufkin leaving the valley alone.

And this didn’t really get fulfilled in any real way. Yet it implies that the future of the series will go in a direction where moomin is the one to help snufkin in some way. That part isn’t even romantic, but it goes to show that they stopped focusing on this important connection between them.

Their relationship in season 2 continues very beautifully. Moomin immediately wants to go make sure snufkin is okay when the volcano’s gonna erupt. There’s an entire conversation that highlights their difference of perspective with loving vs possessing in regards to the ruby and the hobgoblin. Something that is linked to their relationship and things they need to figure out. Then when they have to leave the valley, moomin wonders if he’ll ever see snufkin again. On top of that, he and snorkmaiden have their break up.

Which I want to talk about their relationship a bit. A majority of the episodes that feature them as leads do it with a wedge between them. Their relationships is honestly not great going both ways. They clash and are generally unhappy. And usually moomin has to apologize for something that doesn’t exactly feel is entirely on him. Little My I get. I mean he didn’t think the note would get to mymble but this was still a genuine mess up on his part. But he ended up on a rock in the middle of the sea over the ghost episode. And snorkmaiden spends much of their time making a home together getting angry because he misses his family and hasn’t come to terms with saying goodbye to them. There are times they’re together where he’s selfish and she’s just angry at him. They don’t feel like a happy couple to cheer for. Back in 90s moomins I actually did like them. They were cute. I was a bit divided between that and snufmin because there were these moments that really did count for a lot and had such a wholesome feeling. But moominvalley honestly made me cheer for a break up. Meanwhile, he and snufkin have this relationship that they’re navigating in moominvalley. They don’t argue much even when they have different perspectives. Moomin admires snufkin and in some ways tries to emulate him. But all while still being his own moomin and figuring himself out.

The two are still given parallels in little moments such as zooming in when they take each other’s hands.

So back to season 2 and how it handled snufmin. When moomin leaves the valley we see snufkin dealing with that absence for a change. He begins to understand how moomin feels when he’s gone. While he’s at the moomin house he seems pretty in his element for the most part. He seems happy to play along and give toffle an idea of what the moomin family was like. But in that there are scenes where he’s looking for a note. We see bits of how much he misses moomin and wants to know where his friend has gone and when he’ll be back. This is the beginning of a shift in their relationship. Because snufkin gets to feel what moomin feels like. And when he hears that the moomins are coming his face lights up the way moomintroll’s would.

They’re often portrayed in a way that shows that they’re the most important person to the other. There’s this sort of soft undertone that seems to suggest feelings. And all while their relationships grows and changes and they become all the better for it.

Also there’s this

Season 3!

Season 3 felt like there was a change in direction. I feel at this point that there was deliberate queerbaiting but I also know that there was a shift somewhere around season 3. We got the music cut. The voice actor for moomin changed. There were some adjustments with the writing team. But they still deliberately put in scenes with this duo. And with romantic framing. I could be convinced that season 1 and 2 were made with the idea of them as endgame in some capacity. That the queerbaiting wasn’t from day 1 and that it began here. There were really great moments with them. But it feels like they shoehorn snorkmaiden in as a romantic interest again. A lot of episodes with her here don’t exactly make it explicit but there are some that nail it in. They reunite and it almost feels like they’re back together again without a full conversation. Especially with the final episode. I feel like the narrative would’ve been richer if they hadn’t done that considering the way they’ve been building snufmin up.

But I’ll focus on moomin and snufkin for now. When snufkin sees moomin again moomin goes for the greeting he’s been used to but snufkin gives him a hug. That description alone won’t do it justice though. The music rises as it zooms in on their eyes as they make their way to each other. When snufkin hugs moomin you can see the joy from both of them. It shows how their greetings and by extension their relationship has evolved over the seasons.

And then it cuts to snorkmaiden.

This becomes a notable pattern in season 3. It’ll give a really meaningful scene that pushes snufkin and moomin in a more romantic light only to undercut it by reminding you that snorkmaiden is here. It’s at this point where it feels like they know a ton of fans are here for snufmin. They include the pairing. But they also seem to be reminding us that snorkmaiden is here to stay and in a more romantic way. But there’s still this hope, especially if you recall everything from seasons 1 and 2 and the way that they felt. Especially if you rewatch them right before watching season 3. And the show very clearly uses that and makes it feel like there’s a chance. Makes the viewers hope and stick around to find out.

So let’s go through season 2. Moomin and snufkin make some progress on their relationship. They’ve switched positions now and have more of an idea of how the other feels when one of them leaves. And from there they communicate that. Especially moomin. This is shown to a degree in the episode with the fairgrounds. Again in lonely mountain. There are also little nods here and there about their relationship. But again. Lonely mountain is the big one. It starts with little my getting on moomin’s case for worrying over his ‘precious snufkin’

As usual moominmama also seems to act like she knows there’s something more to his relationship with snufkin. Papa remains oblivious though. There’s a parallel between the parents and snufmin too. But the most well known part is this

look. there’s nothing remotely platonic about this. This is one of those things that someone straight and homophobic could detect. The point where they’d stop arguing ‘they’re just friends’ because there’s no way that’s all. I mean just listen to moomin’s “yes” when snufkin goes to add something. There’s so much hope and feeling in that word that I would love to get my hands on the script to find the voice direction for that. I mean come on

And better yet it ends with an interruption so we know they’ll have a whole heart to heart later. A conversation where they lay out their feelings. The feelings that were clearly present here.

Except they don’t

Anyway the season goes on. Moomin, snufkin, and obligatory third wheel sniff go on a journey to take the sun back after it was stolen. They get it back and the season ends with a beautifully queer scene that promises more to come from these two.

Except that a few minutes prior snorkmaiden calls moomin her soulmate and they have their usual thing. And even after snorkmyden really did get some good content this season.

Look, I know that snorkmyden was probably not on their minds throughout production. There’s a difference between the way they handle snufmin and the way they handle snorkmyden. Both duos get great development in their relationships but while there are a ton of cute moments between snorkmaiden and little my, it never feels like there’s a focus on making that endgame. It feels more like snufmin did in some of the other adaptations - something with cute moments and a genuine bond that could be seen as romantic but it’s highly unlikely it won’t be. I want to say this since this series didn’t feel that way for snufmin. It felt like the first chance of it working out fully. I put a lot of scenes in here showing it but the first two season really show it in a way clips and gifs can’t. There’s just so much there and it’s beautiful and sweet. It feels hopeful for them.

Until season 4. Season 4 feels like the team shrugged off all of it. They step even further away. It’s like season 3 but without any of the scenes between them. Suddenly, you’re looking at scenes between them where they talk and have physical contact but the deeper feelings are completely gone. It’s like the anime. Where you can smile about it and think ‘aw them’ but you know it won’t happen. They heavily lean to snorkmaiden and moomin instead. This is the final season. They know people will watch to see if moomin and snufkin go anywhere romantically. And even if people don’t finish it, they’ve got people paying for memberships just to see if it happens. So it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t happen. Because they’ve secured the views and the money.

I do want to say that when I refer to it as becoming canon I don’t know if they’d call each other boyfriends or even kiss. But I would expect them to acknowledge it as there being something more. Like the series ending with them having a discussion about how much they mean to each other. Something that shows they’ll go into the future and continue to get close. Physical closeness like a hug or one putting his hand on the others or even just leaning against each other. Whatever it would be I’d expect more than this. Because they very clearly built these two to be inseparable in that one required the other to undergo their full arc. The show starts with a promise that their relationship will be close to the story. But then season 4 hardly shows snufkin at all

This is what queerbaiting is. And I never expected it to happen with this series. Not after the team talked about it with care. It’s such a gut punch after waiting for five years to see how it’d turn out. I don’t know if they always intended it to be a way to bring in customers. Maybe it was initially going to work out but they changed it between season 2 and 3. I don’t know. But this. This really is queerbaiting. We live in a time where gay relationships are more accepted. They show up in the media more. We’re finally at a time where this relationship could be made more explicit instead of having this ambiguously romantic subtext. And if someone made a new adaptation of moomins and didn’t do that, that would be perfectly and completely fair and okay. If they didn’t consistently imply that there could and even would be something more. But here they used a very old and well loved pairing to gather fans and make money only to never have it come to fruition. Season 4 of moominvalley felt like companies on july 1st. I literally can’t think of a better comparison for how it feels. The first video starts with the quote “The Spring Tune is where we say that this series is going to be different. That you’re going to have to wait and give it time and just be patient. And wait for the story to unfold.”

And so many people did. But then it turned out like this. And I don’t know if that was always the intention. Because it feels like that interview was suggesting that it would go in that direction. But heck. The whole series up until season 3 felt like it would go in that direction. And then it didn’t.

Gay representation is something that has a huge positive impact on the lgbtq community. Even more so on the world overall since it allows people to see these relationships and shows that it’s okay for people to be gay. And it would be even nicer for a series that started off with that subtext got the full representation now that we’re in more accepting times. And it felt like it would be even more meaningful with recent treatment of gay stories.

Our flag means death was cancelled, shadow and bone, the owl house had its final season drastically shortened, good omens is only getting a single episode for their finale

Many are just getting dropped and in a time where this community needs them more than ever. These are shows that make people feel seen. Shows that bring a feeling of joy and comfort and acceptance. And it’s even worse to see that there’s still queerbaiting now. This could’ve had such a beautiful ending and likely would’ve been loved for many years to come if they committed to what they’d built up all this time. How could someone take a series created by a woman who not only added subtext in her original stories but was bi, and use it to build up a romantic story just to bring in money and then toss all that development away. I don’t know what else to say other than this is queerbaiting. And the gay community deserves better. I really did believe that moominvalley would do better by us.

[spanishskulduggery]

Baldur's Gate 3 - Non-binary Translation in Spanish

A while back I had mentioned that when I learned how to change language settings for Baldur's Gate 3, I was curious to learn how they would adapt the non-binary [no binario] option into Spanish since Spanish (like many Romance Languages) is very gendered

What I saw actually surprised me a bit

Usually in game translations with different genders, English tends to treat you as a "they" even though it's usually male or female; and in Spanish most of the lines are gendered, or phrased in a very ambiguous way in translation like speaking of your character as una persona "a person" rather than "he" or "she", or "they"

This is one of the first times I've seen the gender neutral -e endings used in an official setting

-

For the purposes of this, and any future posts on this, I decided I would try to play as a non-binary gnome cleric. I should also mention that when you start up the game in Spanish and you do the character customization, everything starts you with the base word (i.e. masculine by default, or possibly agender but looks masculine)... as in you can choose to be elfo "elf", semielfo "half-elf", humano "human", semiorco "half-orc"... choose between bárbaro "barbarian", mago "wizard", brujo "warlock" and so on

My default character creation screen read gnomo, clérigo for "gnome cleric"

But the way your character is addressed by others is what changes

The first NPC you interact with is "Us" a little brain thing you can choose to help. If you do it calls you "friend":

Nosotros: Somos libres. Tenemos nuestra libertad. amigue Us: We are free. We have our freedom. Friend [nb].

The word used is amigue

For the sake of understanding Spanish grammar, you probably know amigo/a "friend". The G here is a hard G. The gender neutral ending is E... but the combination of GE is pronounced like an H sound in Spanish [la gelatina "gelatin" for example is like "hel-a-ti-na"]. To preserve that hard G sound, you have to add a UE to it... so amigo/a becomes amigue for non-binary

[if you study Spanish this is the exact same grammar you'll see in turning -gar verbs into subjunctive forms; why pagar would turn to pague]

The next person you come across is Lae'zel:

Lae'zel: Tsk'va. No eres une sierve. ¡Vlaakith me bendijo en el día de hoy! Juntes, tal vez podamos sobrevivir. Lae'zel: Tsk'va. You are no thrall [nb]. Vlaakith blessed me today ["on this day of today"; emphatic]. Together [nb plural], we may (yet) survive.

Interestingly, there's first siervo/a meaning "servant" or "serf" or "thrall"

What I found very interesting was that you have une... un and una being "a" are used for indefinite articles; the non-binary form seems to be une

What threw me off though was seeing juntes... now junto/a is "together" [lit. "joined"] but juntes implies a non-binary plural.

I don't know if this is because in Spanish grammar it would imply that non-binary trumps feminine [the way amigos "friends" could be male+female or multiple male, as opposed to amigas "friends" being all female]... or if it's maybe an error or something else; the game treats Lae'zel as a woman in every other regard so I think it's the first one which is a situation I somehow hadn't considered. I had just assumed it would be juntos ...or juntas if you played female

Next I decided to rescue Gale first because he uses a lot of adjectives/professions and I wanted to see what they looked like:

Gale: No serás clérigue por casualidad, ¿verdad? ¿Médique? ¿Cirujane? ¿Increíblemente hábil con una aguja de tejer? Gale: You wouldn't happen to be a cleric, right? A doctor/medic? Surgeon? Unbelievably skilled with a knitting needle?

First is clérigo/a "cleric" being used in non-binary as clérigue. Similarly we have médique which is the non-binary médico/a for "medical doctor"

[just like above C turned to QUE to preserve a hard C/K sound; you'll see this with subjunctive and even preterites of -car verbs... why atacar "to attack" will turn to ataqué "I attacked" and ataque in subjunctive... because CE has a soft S sound in Latin America, and can be lisped in Spain]

And next is cirujane... the word cirujano/a is "surgeon"

Finally important note - hábil being "able" or "skilled" is a unisex adjective, so there is no change in any gender - masculine, feminine, or non-binary

*Note: I did miss it but at some point someone used the article le to describe my character. The el and la "the" are the masculine and feminine definite articles; le is non-binary "the" which still catches me by surprise because it looks French to me

-

I've been told since I made the original post that people have seen the non-binary E ending used in other things, but this was special for me to see. I'm curious how the other gendered languages available treated non-binary options

It was a fun surprise for me, especially for some modern day Spanish linguistics in a VERY big modern game, with non-binary word choices being heavily prominent. It's a bit of a learning experience for me

If I find any more fun examples of NB language being used I'll let y'all know as I go

[miss-oranje-disco-dancer]

sweet dreams

pairing: james sunderland x reader? (written in third person pov, v ambiguous description of nameless woman)

cws/tags: smut, p in v, cheating? or is it?, not proofread, weird vibes and a little dark ig, but it's just the mood of the game

summary: james re-enters heaven's night and finds a woman who seems to remember him. he does not remember her. basically if maria successfully seduced him except it's not maria?

a/n: what is going on in this fic? idk

wc: 1.4k

Mary’s body lies cold in the backseat despite the blanket covering her. He will not find her in the gardens, the old apartment, or any hotel room. Only in a videotape in which she turns to static before it ends. 

The only warmth he has is the jacket he wears. Until he returns to Heaven’s Night. A certain familiarity struck him when he entered the building for the first time. Maybe it’s the stench of liquor, drawing him toward another reality, one void of grief. Maybe it’s the neon lights, the metal pole, a discarded bra. Maybe he’s been here before. The woman sitting at the bar looks at him as if he has. 

“James,” she says with an inviting smile. 

“How do you know my name?” he asks, taking cautious, yet steady steps in her direction. 

“How does anyone know anyone else’s name?” 

“Is that a riddle?”

“No, that was just a question. I’m not trying to trick you, James. I learned your name when you introduced yourself to me.”

“I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember meeting you at all.”

“You’ve forgotten me already?” Her expression drops, every part of her face is disappointed. 

“I’m sorry. I’m just going through a lot right now. Don’t take it personally.” He finds himself reaching out his hand and placing it on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. 

“Let’s start over,” he suggests. 

She nods and pulls herself together. 

He holds out his hand, and she takes it into her own. Her hands are soft minus the sharp tips of her acrylic nails that tickle his skin. 

“You’re cold,” she remarks, and he cannot decide if her pout pities or mocks him. 

“No, I’m James,” he says, forcing the creases of his lips to turn upwards into something resembling a smile. “Remember?”

“Of course,” she says with a breathy giggle. 

“Now, how about you tell me your name?”

“You know people like me don’t give out our real names, don’t you?”

People like you… it takes him a moment to realize what she means: sex workers. 

“Oh. That’s right. But I’m guessing you have an alias or something.”

“I’ve been called many names. ‘Angel’ when I’m here at Heaven’s Night, ‘Kitty’ at The Catwalk, ‘Jade’ at Jewels, ‘Baby’ by some former lovers. Call me whatever you like.”

Choosing someone else’s name was not something he’d prepared for and it leaves him stumped for a moment. 

“Don’t overthink it,” she says cupping his cheek with her hand. “As long as it’s not Mary…” 

“Why not Mary?” He flinches at the sound of her name. 

She pretends like she didn’t hear him, and pays no mind to his nerves, shrugging them off as she leads him to a seat in front of the stage. 

He follows her, eyes stuck on her curves. He startles when she pushes him onto the loveseat. 

“James, baby,” she says, her voice softer, but just as sultry. “Why are you so nervous? You want this, don’t you?”

“I just feel like I shouldn’t, that’s all.”

“Your mind is playing tricks on you, then. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see what a woman has to offer. It’s like window shopping, there’s no harm in looking.”

Before he can say anything else she finds a boombox in the corner and sets it up - in doing so, she leans over and reveals a tiny strip of lace underneath her skirt. 

James tries to quickly adjust his pants as she’s turned away from him, but she must know he’s hard. What’s the point in pretending?

When she steps onto the stage, she needs no introduction, only the opening synth of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) to lead her up the short set of stairs before she walks around the pole, prepared to do tricks that James’ imagination couldn’t conjure up even if he begged it to. But despite his amazement at the way her body bends, even more so when her clothes begin to disappear, it’s the moment she sits at the front of the stage and spreads her legs, giving him a better view of the red lace thong he got a peek at earlier, that really gets him going. 

He didn’t know he was hungry until he was starving. 

The music doesn’t stop, the cassette runs its course. The scantily-clad woman straddles James’ lap, just hovering but close enough to feel the warmth emanate from her body. 

“I know I said it’s just looking, but there wouldn’t really be any harm in touching me, would there?” 

She takes his hands in hers and places them on her chest. 

He can feel her tits, her skin, her heartbeat. She’s so warm, and real, and alive. There is the childlike urge to squeeze them, to hold and let go, make them bounce in front of his eyes, but instead, he slides his hands down her waist to her hips, sitting her firmly in his lap. 

“You’re so warm,” he says without thinking. 

“I’ll be cold soon if you leave me like this,” she says. Then, leans down to whisper in his ear, “Take off your clothes.”

When he asks, “are you sure?” it stumbles out of his mouth and lands with a groan as she peppers kisses down his neck.  

She only hums in response. He removes his jacket and unbuttons his shirt so her mouth can reach further – to his collarbone, while her hands travel to his poorly-hidden erection. 

She looks up at him and bats her eyelashes before going any further. It’s her way of asking permission. 

“I guess… as long as we don’t go too far…”

“We’ll just get naked, maybe even kiss, nothing more,” she says. 

So, he helps her get his pants off and she slips off her barely-there panties. 

He feels alive for the first time in years when her warm body touches his, skin-to-skin. 

He doesn’t protest when she kisses him, he closes his eyes and lets himself feel something other than dread for once. 

She surely feels his need prodding at her core, but she must feel his guilt as well because she assures him, “If it slips in by accident, then, it’s nobody’s fault, right?”

“Right,” he says, completely under her spell, nodding along. 

Of course there are no accidents. This is a mistake, not an accident. James knows this, but when she repositions her hips, he lets her wet heat envelope his cock. 

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to…” she says, a tiny grin peeking through her faux-apology. 

“It’s okay, I’ll just pull out,” he says. And slowly, with a grunt, he does. 

He keeps a tight grip on her hips so he can guide her back to him. “You can sit back down now,” he says, with his cock ready to enter her again. 

“We’ll do better this time,” she says, rubbing her folds teasingly along his shaft before gripping it and sliding it inside her. 

“Sorry, it just, you know, slipped in,” he says, almost believing his own lies. 

“But it’s only the tip. It barely even counts, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” The music covers up his heavy breathing and her soft moans. But James makes sure she can hear him when he says, “You’re so wet, it’s only natural for it to slide right in.” He fills her in one thrust and it finally drags a long-held back groan from him. 

They can’t make more silly excuses when they’re both breathless as she bounces up and down on his cock at a steadily increasing pace. He holds her like he fears he’ll lose her and buries his face in her neck as if muffling any moans would take away any of the guilt. 

But he’s shameless when he asks if he can cum inside her, and she’s quick to say, ‘yes’. 

Though he’s as warm as ever, he shudders through his climax. After being pent-up for so long, he has a dizzyingly intense orgasm. What keeps him grounded is each squeeze of her walls around him and the sting of her nails digging into his skin as she cums at the same time he does. 

The guilt returns along with confusion when she stands back up to get dressed. He follows her lead, but once his shirt is halfway-buttoned, he freezes, looking over at her for some sort of explanation, some sort of direction. 

“What?” she asks, brushing off her skirt as she sits down at the bar. 

“Nothing. I just- I don’t think we should’ve done that.”

“Don’t feel guilty, James. You said you were looking for someone, and you found someone.”

“No, I meant I was looking for-”

“Love? Comfort? Absolution?” She laughs differently now. “You won’t get those here.”

“No, for my wife…”

“Mary?”

“Yeah, do you know her?”

“Not anymore.”

Like everything else, she is swallowed up by the fog. 

[ugh-yoongi]

the very last thing i decide | pjm

(or, the one in which a love exists that's easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.)

✘ PAIRING jimin x f. reader ✘ SUMMARY you learn what it means to love with blood on your hands. ✘ GENRE hitman/assassin au; angst, smut ✘ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✘ WARNINGS they are both hitmen (hitpeople?) so there's all the content that goes along with that: violence, death, mentions of blood (a lot) and weapons, murder, but no explicit gore. everyone is morally grey at best and downright psychotic at worst (especially yoongi). reader gets stabbed. no one knows how to be a functional human being. swearing, smoking, light smut (penetrative & oral sex), miscommunication and unrequited love but not really, i drop a classic tumblr meme in a line of dialogue. ambiguous/hopeful ending!! some of the themes here are kinda heavy and i am not entirely sure how to tag them so if you have any questions pls don’t hesitate to ask! ✘ WORDCOUNT 12k ✘ LISTEN TO manchester orchestra - telepath ✘ THANK YOU i cannot remember everyone i’ve showed this to over the years. @the-boy-meets-evil for looking this over and brainstorming with me today. @hot-soop for always being a help. @effortandmore because you told me an embarrassingly long time ago this was worth finishing. and i’m pretty sure i also sent this to @jihopesjoint at some point too. i did a quick edit of this on my own, but after nearly three years i just wanted it posted and out of my wips so i'm sure i missed things. pls ignore them. ✘ AUTHOR'S NOTE fic drops two days in a row?? who am i?? i started this in may 2021 and it was supposed to be a simple pegging fic. i abandoned it bc i was convinced no one would want to read it. between today and yesterday i have written thousands of words and made it across the finish line. i hope you like it. the violence is a metaphor for love or whatever.

[37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA]

Jimin’s hair had been red the first time he met you.

How fitting, he thinks, considering he’s currently bleeding out on a table.

Well, there’s still a bit of fight left in him. He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, which he assumes is a good sign; he can still hear Hoseok barking out orders quite clearly. The edges of his vision are fuzzy and the pain in his abdomen is sharp and unrelenting, but he still has enough brain power left to wish he’d died instead.

Because you’d saved his life. And now he’s further indebted to you.

(Jimin never leaves a debt unpaid, but he’s not sure how to make even on something like this.)

Jungkook and Taehyung are fetching supplies faster than Hoseok can ask for them. Two pairs of frazzled, spaced-out eyes. Four sets of trembling limbs. Namjoon’s wearing burn marks into the floor, his cuticles bloody and nearly worried to the bone since he can’t keep them out of his mouth.

And then there’s you.

Sitting cross-legged in a chair as you scroll through your phone. Jimin’s blood is still drying on your hands, leaving smears as you drag your thumb back and forth across the screen, and this doesn’t seem to faze you one bit.

Behind you, Yoongi takes a seat at the piano and starts playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Jimin simply cannot die like this. He can’t die on a wooden table in a room with a piano on which Min Yoongi is playing Baroque organ pieces.

“What is this, a fucking funeral?” Hoseok snaps, though there’s a desperation creeping into his tone that Jimin does not like, does not want to hear. “Cut it out, Yoongi.”

Said man staunchly ignores the doctor, transitioning flawlessly into the fugue. Jimin barely hears the tinkle of your laughter but he hears it all the same, and he wants to pretend it doesn’t calm him, bring him back down to earth when he starts drifting too far away. But you do, and it does, and all he can think about is: will you miss him if he dies? Will it take you long to wash his blood from your hands?

Hoseok’s absolutely incensed, pushed to the limits of his stress at the thought of not being able to save Jimin’s life, and Jimin appreciates this, really, but not when Hoseok pushes two gloved fingers deep into the wound in his stomach so hard all he can do is cry. “Yoongi—”

You snort. You don’t even look up from your phone.

Namjoon, for all his leadership and stoicism and poise under pressure, is just as frantic and panicked as the rest. It’s not everyday one of his people is inches from death ten feet away from him. Most people usually die in the shadows. Kim Namjoon has faced down death more times than most, yet watching the life slowly fade from Jimin’s eyes is too much even for him. “Yoongi, please—”

But the fugue keeps going, tempo change after tempo change, the two pillars of this organization spiraling completely by the time the coda starts, unfocused and sweating and praying. To gods they don’t believe in, to hope, to chance���whatever and whoever might be listening. Jimin usually loves hearing Yoongi play. It’s the only thing that humanizes him, and Jimin had spent so many restless nights shoulder to shoulder with him on that exact bench in the blue hours of the early morning, hypnotized by the way the older man’s knobby fingers moved across the keys.

This is it, he thinks.

Jimin’s going to die with Toccata and Fugue in D minor playing in the background.

He’s imagined his death so many times. Stupid not to in this line of work. Violent, quick and painless, in his sleep, drawn out and gory, a message. And in all of those scenarios, it’s either jarringly silent or there’s someone screaming. Usually him, sounding much like he is now, two fingers stuck in his gut. In all of those scenarios, Min Yoongi is never playing Bach as everything fades to black.

You sigh. “Shut the fuck up, Yoongi,” you say, your tone as blasé and inconvenienced as ever.

Shocked at your audacity, one of Yoongi’s fingers slips and hits the wrong key, something dissonant and metallic as it rings out. But the music stops all the same, the silence nearly giving Jimin whiplash. Now he can hear the clinkof Hoseok’s tools, the squelching of his wound, Jungkook’s desperate pleading for him to just be alright, please God, just hang on. He wants the music back. He doesn’t want Jungkook’s crying to be the last thing he hears. Doesn’t want the sound of his own organs imprinted into his memory.

“What’d you say?” Yoongi asks, because no one talks to him that way. They wouldn’t dare. Most people try not to talk to him at all.

But you do.

And, inexplicably, Yoongi listens.

You roll your eyes. “You go deaf in your old age? I said shut the fuck up. Hoseok’s two knuckles deep in Jimin’s fucking stomach and you’re over there having your little Amadeus moment.”

He bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yoongi repeats, and Jimin can’t see him, but he knows his eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl, fists clenched at his side.

“Oh, princess,” you coo, and Yoongi’s fury is palpable, permeates every inch of this place, overrides all the fear and anguish. “I’m talking to you, baby. I know Jiminie’s busy trying not to die and that’s stressful for all of us, but please do try to keep up.”

Jimin hears the flick of Yoongi’s switchblade. Then he hears him say, “Please let me fucking kill her,” in that lazy Daegu drawl of his, like forming full words are beneath him. Not worth the effort when they’re directed at you.

Still seated, you uncross your legs and, through blurred vision, Jimin watches you grab Yoongi by his belt loops to tug him closer, grab the wrist that holds his knife and press it to your own throat. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Yoongi. Be a good boy and make it hurt.”

Jungkook’s near hysterics at Jimin’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? He’s dying!”

Jimin tries to say I’m not, Kookie, I’m okay but the pressure on his abdomen is too intense. He can barely breathe, and Hoseok’s still digging around, still looking for that stupid fucking bullet, had to do something and do it quick so there’d been very little anesthetic and finesse, and he’s silently screaming for someone to just comfort Jungkook, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but instead—

“Serves him right for being a fucking idiot,” you say, words muffled by the knife still pressed to your throat. “What a painful, permanentlesson in not forgetting your fucking vest.”

“Stop it!” Jungkook sobs, fingers ghosting along Jimin’s matted fringe.

Yoongi’s still scowling. “Just say the word, Joon-ah. I’ll make it quick.”

You actually laugh at that. The kind of full-belly laugh Jimin would kill to be able to produce. “You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

Someone snarls. Probably Yoongi. “You’d look so good gutted on the floor like a fish,” he replies, and if Jimin knows him at all, he knows he’s got that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. The one he always gets when he’s about to kill—the one that makes him so unhinged and dangerous. “Left there to bleed out and die all alone like the trash you are.”

No one’s survived that look before, but you just grin, as if being on the receiving end of it is nothing more than another simple inconvenience. “Do it, then,” you prompt. “You’re so big and bad, yet here you are, waiting for Namjoon’s permission like some kind of pathetic fucking dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog.”

Your eyes slowly flick over to Namjoon. “No?” you ask, smile widening as Jimin watches you drag your heeled foot up the inside of Yoongi’s calf, his thigh, stiletto coming to rest in the center of his sternum. “That’s a shame, princess. That pretty neck of yours was just made for a collar.”

There’s no doubt in Jimin’s mind now that he actually died back in that penthouse and is now residing in whatever level of hell is watching you give his associate a semi despite him being a millisecond away from murdering you.

Yoongi would do it, too. No hesitation. You’ve been on his shit list for as long as Jimin can remember, and you’ve been daring him to put his money where his mouth is and just kill you already for just as long.

Taehyung groans. “Can you two just fuck already so the rest of us can be spared of this?”

You click your tongue, tone melting like butter. You’re fond of Taehyung, soft on him. “No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie, and god does that hurt his little feelings.”

Your wicked smile gives away nothing—whether you’re telling a bold truth or just unnecessarily needling Yoongi further—but Jimin’s caught off guard and chokes on your words nonetheless.

Hoseok’s forceps still digging around in his stomach, there’s a quiet hurrah of triumph as he finally locates the bullet. Jimin feels nothing as he retrieves it and plucks it out, a reverberated clank! as he drops it into a kidney dish, your words the anesthetic he’s needed as they play on a loop in his head.

When he finally blacks out, either from the pain or the adrenaline or both, it’s your face that greets him. He never gets the chance to tell you why he forgot his vest.

[64.1466° N, 21.9426° W | Reykjavík, ICELAND]

Jimin’s hair is blue when it happens the first time.

It’s November. Namjoon has sent the two of you to Reykjavik and it’s dark all the time, the midnight hue of his hair blending into the impenetrable nighttime that surrounds you. Jimin works best like this—out of sight, part of the shadows. He’s light on his feet, lithe in ways no one else is, not even you, and he’s impossible to anticipate under the cover of darkness.

That’s why Jimin always takes care of the appetizers.

It’s your job to clean up the main course.

The two of you are two halves of the same lethal coin, working together flawlessly after years of carefully honed practice. Jimin slams an unsuspecting man’s head into a wall and you’re right behind him to put a bullet in it.

It’s just how it goes.

And he trusts you. He has to, otherwise he would’ve gotten taken out years ago. You’re not always in his line of sight, but he always feels you, senses your movements before you’re even on your feet. The times it’s gone wrong—and it’s gone wrong so many fucking times, despite how cautious and skilled the two of you are—you’re always right there to catch him before he even hits the ground. Just like a ghost, as if your only purpose in life is keeping Jimin safe and alive.

(It isn’t, but it sure feels that way.)

Tonight it’s another hit carried out in an overpriced penthouse overlooking the northern shore. You’re in and out, don’t waste a second more than you need to. Jimin doesn’t spare a glance at the carnage left behind. Nothing he hasn’t seen a hundred times before. All blood bleeds the same, but he still wonders, foolishly, if his looks different to you. If it feels wrong when it stains your hands and seeps into your clothes.

Jimin has never been covered in your blood before, but he likes to think it would.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re in the quiet safety of yet another hotel room, chain lock thrown across the door, deadbolt secured. A small arsenal of weapons is retrieved from ankles and waistbands and cleaned and packed away meticulously. Jimin’s the one who makes the call to Namjoon, tells him in code that the job’s done. You’ve barely broken a sweat, but under the fluorescent light of the bathroom, Jimin can see a small smattering of blood just along your temple when he closes the distance between you.

Someone else’s, of course.

Anyone who made you bleed your own blood wouldn’t be a quick, clean kill. Jimin would make sure of that.

There’s less to be done about the half-inch scar in the hollow of your throat—a pearlescent reminder of the twin scar he has just below his navel; a callback to the day your devilish mouth said the words Jimin can’t stop thinking about.

“No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie.”

Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s the feral, years-long build up that’s been simmering between the two of you—low enough to keep warm, contained enough to never evolve into a rapid boil. Maybe Jimin’s just finally desperate enough to go seeking out answers to questions he’s far too scared to put a voice to.

(Really, Jimin knows it’s adrenaline. Nothing more than chemicals. The two of you high on it, heads floating above the clouds. Powerless; or, at the very least, indifferent to stop the very clear path that’s unfolding on the ground below.)

But, god, he needs to know.

Needs answers.

Needs to know if there’s even a chance you feel it, too: the magnetic ebb and flow the two of you have been dancing around for years. If you see how fondly he looks at you. If you have any idea how easy it is for him to get lost in you. If you know he’d let someone put a bullet between his eyes before he placed his life in the hands of anyone else.

Jimin knows he loves you. He’s known it for a long time, just like he knows all those other things that are second nature to him. Loving you is easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.

At least that’s what he’d thought. Until your devilish mouth said those devilish words and sent him into a tailspin he’s yet to recover from.

You have to feel it. God, can’t you? The way the air crackles between you. The way his skin ignites with a simple look from you. The trembling of his fingers at his sides, desperate to just reach out and touch you—fingers that have been bathed in blood, that have taken life. Fingers that now just want to graze softly across your cheekbones, catch on your bottom lip. Fingers that want to hand you the world on a silver platter. Jimin would do anything for you, give you whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to ask.

Can’t you feel that?

He needs to know.

Jimin is composed, elegant. He kills with grace and still maintains as much of his softness as he can. Isn’t ruled by emotion the way Yoongi and Jungkook are. But now, as he teeters on the edge of the unknown, all he wants to do is jump. Wants to buck all his training, all his resolve and forethought, and jump.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, voice thick. Fingers curl into the expensive silk of his shirt just so they have something to do—something to keep them from reaching out and touching you. “Back in Seoul.”

You’re the smartest person Jimin knows. When you ask, “Did I mean what, Chim?” he knows you’re fucking with him. Dragging this out. You know exactly what he’s asking and he knows you’ll never give anything away so easily.

“What you said to Taehyung,” he answers.

You tsk, eyebrows raising in intrigue. As much as Jimin trusts you, as well as you know him, know all those dirty, dirty secrets he’d never tell anyone else, he’s never been so bold with you. “That those long fingers of his would look good wrapped around my throat? Yeah, I meant that.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches at your taunt. “Don’t play games with me.”

A smirk graces your lips. “Trust me, sweetheart,” you say, voice sickly-sweet as the affection starts popping at the last seams holding him together, “if I wanted to play with you, there’s nothing you could do to stop it.”

With Jimin pressed into the wall behind you, you turn to meet his eye in the mirror. Another smile, teeth bared as you run your tongue across your lips, and this one is his undoing. Makes his cock twitch in his dress pants. Makes him bold. “Do you want to, then?” He takes a step forward—close enough to smell the gunpowder stuck to your clothes, your hair. Close enough for the sulfur and metal to sting his nostrils each time he breathes you in. “Do you want to play with me?”

You love Jimin. Maybe it’s a trauma bond or the implicit, unwavering trust the two of you have in one another, but you know you love him limitlessly. But you also know you can’t love him the way he loves you, the way he deserves to be loved by someone, which is why your mask slips as you say, “I can’t give you what you want, Jimin.”

You try to make him understand that. Really, you do—because Jimin is the smartest person you know, and you know he’s thought about every possible consequence down to the most minute detail and has decided this is worth it anyway. You want to believe in something the way Jimin believes in you, even though he’s wrong. You want something worth throwing all of this away for.

Maybe it’s Jimin, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just been so fucking long since someone has looked at you with any gentleness in their eyes at all that when Jimin meets your gaze and says, “I don’t want anything more than you’re willing to give,” you take his hand and jump, too.

And there’s nothing gentle about the first time.

It’s all raw, urgent need, Jimin trying desperately to convince himself it’s more than it is while you convince yourself it’s less.

It’s the two of you finally giving up and giving in, letting yourselves be pulled taut by that invisible string tying you together.

It’s Jimin’s sharp intake of breath when you fully step out of your clothes, the sight rendering him immobile. Whatever plans he’d had before seeing the curves of your body, all the scars from years of working by his side, the mottled yellow-greens and purples from the bruises lining your skin—he has no plans now. Can barely think. Wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from you with a gun to his head.

It’s the final bricks of the wall he’d built around himself—around his heart, around all those words and feelings he’d never put a voice to—crumbling into ash at his feet. Now he knows he can’t go back. Can’t return to a reality where this isn’t his truth. Where there’s no you and him, him and you. Where it’s just a physical exchange, a give-and-take, tit for tat.

And god, he knows he shouldn’t think like this; knows he’s keeping the truth buried somewhere deep behind lock and key.

…But now that he knows how it feels to move inside you, what else is he supposed to do?

You’re everywhere. Clenched around him. Your taste on his tongue. The feel of you on the pads of his fingers. The smell of you making a mockery of all logical thought. No—no, he can’t do a goddamn thing to stop the avalanche now it’s started.

“Fuck,” he whines, fingers digging into your hips. The soft skin he finds purchase in such a contrast from your hardened exterior, but Jimin knows. He knows you, knows the person behind the mask, sees straight through you each time it slips.

What stared back at him had always been just out of reach.

Taunting him.

Screaming come and get me, come make me yours, come and fucking take what you want.

Until now.

Now it’s tangible. Now it’s breathy, fractured moans that echo off tile walls. Now it’s the sound of his name thatleaves your lips like a prayer. Now it’s the sheen of sweat that covers both of you. Now it’s nails scraping down his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

(And Jimin won’t tell you this, but those red welts are proof that this is real, this happened, and later on when he’s alone, when his mind is working overtime, he’ll look at them and he’ll smile. Because they’re real. Because this happened.)

Now, it’s the way blue becomes his favorite color. Because he can see his reflection in the mirror as he unravels and comes to his own demise as he spills inside of you; can see the fluorescent lights reflecting off the hue of his hair.

Jimin’s hair is blue when he realizes he’s in love with you.

[34.6037° S, 58.3816° W | Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA]

Jimin is blond when Namjoon sends you to South America.

The details had been scarce: a diplomatic advisor with a rap sheet of human rights violations that have been continuously swept under the rug and his equally-corrupt lawyer. A candid photograph paperclipped to another manila folder, Namjoon a fan of all those old cliches. Likes being a little cheeky that way when he can get away with it, because god knows he can’t get away with much, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

It’s a simple job. You and Jimin will have it dealt with in a matter of hours. Less if you’re lucky and the universe is agreeable. But the humidity sticks to your skin, has sweat seeping into your clothes and rolling down your temples, and if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s the heat. Makes it hard to think. And Namjoon—Namjoon, who makes sure all of his agents want for nothing—is a cheap bastard. Rarely approves nice lodging, says it’s too risky despite your arguments to the contrary, that people don’t care what you do when you have money, so you’re stuck in some shithole motel room with an aircon unit that keeps blowing out stale, warm air.

And maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should be more cognizant of Jimin and all his feelings, but it’s fucking hot, so you peel your shirt over your head and undo the button of your pants. Sit on the edge of the bed and try to think about anything other than the temperature, how it’s starting to prick uncomfortably at your skin.

Jimin clears his throat, keeps his eyes glued to the disgusting carpet. “Got a text from Seokjin-ssi,” he says, words strained. “Looks like they’ll be solo jobs.”

You groan. Leave it to Seokjin to change the plan at the last minute. “Tell Kim Seokjin he’s a useless piece of shit.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Tell Kim Namjoon if he ever sends us to South America in the summer again I’ll kill him myself.”

Jimin has a laugh like an anodyne. A laugh that takes all those broken, bleeding parts of you and soothes over them like a balm. “Seokjin-ssi says he’s not passing along that particular message.”

“Tell him he’s a bitch, then.”

“He’ll kill me if I say that.”

“He hasn’t done field work in years and he’s probably too vitamin D deficient to leave the basement. He couldn’t even kill a fucking rat.”

There’s another laugh. More forced, less tinkling. You recognize it right away, the sound of anxiety. Solo jobs aren’t common for the two of you. For Yoongi and Taehyung, sure, but not you and Jimin. You’re a team for a reason, and though you’re more than capable of getting this done and out of the way, it doesn’t feel right. Settles in your gut like something rotten, knowing you’ll be without Jimin.

And you know he’s thinking it, too. How he turns the burner over and over in his hands, as if there’s some combination of words he can send back to Seoul to get Seokjin and Namjoon to reconsider. Plans don’t change often; not like this, anyway. These have been declared solos for a reason, and that’s a thought you can’t linger on too long.

“Are they leaving it up to us?” Jimin nods, still not meeting your eye. “Do you have a preference?”

He shrugs, tossing the phone on the small table in the corner. Nothing else to be done. “Not really. What do you think?”

“Nah, don’t care, either. Just toss me one.”

Santiago Aguirre… 47 years old… Resides in a high-rise luxury apartment in Retiro…

Your eyes skim the file, study the black and white photograph of the lawyer. Read over the list of all his high-profile, degenerate clients and all their high-profile crimes. You read about the previous attempts on his life, the seemingly never-ending list of people who want him dead. Your eyes go back to his photograph, frowning at the smug look on his face. What stares back at you is a man who thinks he’s invincible, who thinks a penthouse apartment on the top floor and a security team in the lobby means he’s impervious to harm. A man who has made money off people just like him: dirty, corrupt, hands stained red.

“Okay?” Jimin asks, looking up from his own file.

He’s so striking. So safe. And you know what he’s done, giving you the hit he thinks is easier, willing to risk himself on a solo mission to ensure you make it out. There’s no guarantees in this line of work, in life in general, but Jimin’s brand of selfless love is certainly one.

So you just nod, knowing someone slimy like this can quickly go sideways, and decide you can do the same.

“I’m gonna get ready,” you say. “The plan is the same as all the other solo jobs. Get in, get it done, get out as quickly as possible. Lay low. Don’t come straight back here.”

Jimin rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything else?”

You exhale. Try to quiet the nerves roiling in your stomach. Barely resist the urge to press a lingering kiss to Jimin’s forehead before you swallow hard and say, “Yeah. Stay alive.”

It comes out more like a plea.

—

You’re good at your job.

Rarely feel much guilt over it, either, which—well, you’re not sure what that means. That something is permanently broken in your psyche, probably. Being able to take life so easily and without remorse. It’s not natural.

Kim Namjoon is a man who plays God, is the one who decides who gets to live and who has to die. His word is the only law you adhere to. And that’s… that’s something. Makes it less burdensome, takes some weight off, because Kim Namjoon wouldn’t accept a morally-ambiguous job. He wouldn’t ask you to put your life on the line for some petty bullshit.

This is how you’ve lived for the last four years. Four years of blindly following Namjoon’s word, of being a good little soldier and doing whatever is asked of you. Four years of being responsible for not only your own life, but Jimin’s as well, just as he is for yours. Four years that have served you well, all things considered.

Until now.

Something about this job hits you hard. Doesn’t settle quite as quickly as the ones that have come before. For the first time, you’d looked down at the lifeless body at your feet and couldn’t stop the trembling, could barely quell the nausea. Thought what the fuck am I doing, what kind of life is this for the first time. Thought back to that day four years ago when Kim Namjoon saved your life and offered you a job and wondered, for the first time, what would’ve happened if you’d said no.

Now, as you suck on a cigarette, legs dangling off the roof of a building looking not far from collapse, a new thought:

Would Namjoon let you go if you asked?

He’s taken care of you. For four years you’ve wanted for nothing. Have socked away more money than you’ll ever be able to spend, even if you live to a thousand. You could go anywhere, become anyone, and no one would suspect a thing. There’d just be you and a million lifetimes’ worth of transgressions, alone under the weight of all that burden; alone, except for all the ghosts that come to greet you every time you close your eyes.

Doesn’t matter. Namjoon might be willing to let you go, give you the chance to salvage something from this life in the name of normalcy, but Yoongi would gladly put a bullet in your head before he let you disappear with all his secrets.

Doesn’t matter.

You stub out the cigarette and put the butt in your pocket. Make your way down to the street. Stay under the shadows—just visible enough to redirect any suspicion shot your way. You pretend to take a call, flawless Argentinian Spanish falling from your lips as you tell the imaginary person on the other end all about your fucked up day at work. How your manager never gets off your ass, doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re too fucking stupid to run a simple executable.

No one spares you a second glance.

Not here, on this nondescript street in a nondescript Argentinian neighborhood, and not when you stumble into the tiny lobby of your shithole motel. The poor kid behind the desk doesn’t even glance up, just mutters a good evening, miss under his breath that you return in a voice far too high-pitched to be your own.

Better to be seen and be unremarkable than draw attention to yourself trying to stay invisible, you figure.

The cameras in the stairwell are broken so you take the steps two at a time. Pull the room key from its place inside your boot, happy to no longer have it digging into your skin. Pause just long enough to make sure you don’t hear anything on the other side of the door before you’re unlocking it with your free hand wrapped around the trigger of your gun.

It’s empty.

Of course it is.

Jimin stashed the burner in a place no one but you would think to look. You text one simple word to Seokjin—Hey!—and you get two in return: Who’s this?

You know who it is, you fucking dickhead.

It takes a few seconds, but the reply is a simple—

Sorry.

Then you toss aside the phone and float in the darkness of the room. There’s nothing to do but wait, because you don’t dare to do anything alone. There’s sweat and blood and fuck knows what else stuck to your skin, your hair, but you can’t risk taking a shower. Can’t risk the water dampening your senses. Can’t risk being cornered in a moldy bathroom, only one way out. Can’t risk doing anything alone. Can’t take a fucking shower.

It’s this thought, more than anything else, that has your body flushing with rage.

What kind of life is this?

Namjoon had never mentioned repaying your debt. He’d never insinuated you owed him anything at all for saving your life, but you know something like that never comes for free. Namjoon doesn’t do anything just because. Has no goodness in his heart to do anything in the name of it. Watching Jimin nearly die in front of him had been the exception to his usual nature; a rare slip-up by an otherwise detached, uncaring man.

Still, whatever you owe him has surely been repaid by now. Tenfold, if the bloodstains along your collar are anything to go by.

It’s time for Namjoon to let you go.

—

Something is wrong.

Two hours have ticked by and there’s no word from Jimin. No word from Namjoon or Seokjin, either, which is the only reason you’re still in this nauseating motel room and not out on the streets searching for him. Solo jobs don’t go like this. The two of you are always in and out, tragically efficient. Back to where you started and then back on a plane, nothing left behind except a singular bullet hole and another fragmented piece of your conscience.

You’ve had a lot of jobs go wrong, but never two hours.

You’re about three minutes from coming out of your skin. Sick to your stomach with worry, anxiety weighing you down like an anchor. You wouldn’t be able to go out searching for Jimin like this even if you could, and there’s no point in dwelling on that, examining it further. All you can do is wait.

It’s another hour before you hear the click of the lock. You’re nearly on your knees in relief, but you stay rooted to the flimsy mattress. Try not to think about how you’ll have to sleep on it, even though you’ll be up half the night with residual worry. All those lingering ghosts.

Jimin doesn’t say anything, so neither do you.

[55.6761° N, 12.5683° E | Copenhagen, DENMARK]

Jimin’s hair is orange when you go to Copenhagen.

Not for a job, just to breathe. You wanted to see the city at Christmastime; Jimin’s never been.

You crack a joke. Point out buildings of similar color, have him stand in front of one as you take a picture. Everyone smiles when they pass the two of you on the street, Jimin’s eyes fond even though he rolls them as you pose him how you want. Still stands against an apricot-colored wall and flashes a smile and a peace sign, cheeks pink from the cold. Does a good job of pretending the two of you aren’t here just for fun, that this is something more.

It’s not.

The two of you fucked in a hotel room in Reykjavik and haven’t spoken a word of it since.

You nearly lost your mind over him in Buenos Aires and haven’t spoken a word of that, either.

Instead, his hand finds yours as the two of you walk around Tivoli Gardens. You marvel at the lights and Jimin marvels at you. You share mulled wine and spiced doughnuts. Jimin tries to drag you on the swings but you plant your feet and refuse, laughing through your refusals. As dangerous as your lives are, motion sickness might be the most. He gets his revenge and poses you in front of a giant nutcracker, then again in front of one of the endless Christmas trees.

Jimin pays for the two of you to decorate honey cakes. You’re surrounded by families with shrieking children and palpable adoration, and it’s all you can do not to wonder if anyone you’ve taken out had ever had something like this. Something that makes your soul warm; something that still lingers in your bones years later.

The two of you take a selfie when it starts to snow. It stings when you have no one to send it to, so it just lives in your phone. Maybe it’s enough.

On another day, Jimin holds your hand through Torvehallerne. This time you marvel at him while he marvels at all the food, eyes wide each time he turns to ask if he should buy something. You always say yes and he always shares, and it’s all you can do not to think about why you don’t have to budget yourselves. Why you’re able to walk through the market and buy whatever you want; how you could buy every item for sale and it wouldn’t make a dent.

(You pick up small trinkets for Taehyung and Jungkook. Not because you want to, but because it feels nicer than remembering that you have no one to buy gifts for. Not really. Not anymore.)

Jimin wants to ice skate, so you do. He holds your hand then, too. More out of necessity than anything else, and he has none of his usual grace. Someone hands you a free cup of hot chocolate, just because. Jimin pouts and then it’s his hot chocolate. It’s all you can do not to kiss away the whipped cream on the corner of his mouth.

Back in your lavish hotel, after countless days have blurred together and Jimin’s fresh from a shower, skin flushed, you finally ask yourself if it’s worth putting up such a fight. If it’s really all that bad to care for Jimin and be cared for in return. If it’s all that bad to be someone else, just for a little while: someone with a normal life who makes a normal living and has a normal capability to love. Someone who isn’t damaged beyond repair.

That will never be you. Not fully, and certainly not in this lifetime, but maybe it could be, a little.

“Jimin,” you say, because you need to try. Jimin loves you in ways you’ll never understand, and you want to be better for him. “We should talk.”

Your voice is small and hesitant, and Jimin hates it. Sees trouble where there’s only vulnerability, so he misreads. Shakes his head. Takes a risk and stands between your legs at the edge of the bed—yours, because there’s two—as he tilts your head back, thumbs pressing into the contours of your cheeks. The scar still sits in the hollow of your throat, and that version of you feels so far away. That life feels so far away.

There’s no violence here. There’s no blood, no fugues. There’s just you and Jimin, whose voice is small like yours when he shakes his head and says, “You should kiss me instead.”

The second time is nothing like the first.

Jimin moves delicately. Feels like silk lace, tastes like spun sugar. Moves both his mouth and his body fluidly, no hesitation, yet he still takes his time. Still pauses to look at you with endless devotion; with awed reverence. Makes a map of your body and marks all his favorite places with his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he says. Speaks the words against the skin just beneath your ear. “Anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, just have to ask.”

What you want isn’t tangible, isn’t possible, so you stay quiet. Thread your fingers through Jimin’s hair, gasp when he mouths along the column of your throat. Jimin reserves all his softness for you. Bathes you in it. Would kill anyone to keep it that way.

So you say, “Want your mouth,” and let slip a quiet moan when he gives you what you’ve asked for. When he situates himself between your thighs and sucks and licks until you’re writhing, making a mess, grasping fruitlessly at the sheets, his hair, his shoulders, only calming when his hands find yours and your fingers interlock.

Jimin mouths at you until you’re trembling. Until you’re needy and desperate, hips moving on their own, fucking yourself against his face. Until nothing exists except the heat in your belly, the stars behind your eyelids, the heady, fucked-out sound of Jimin’s voice as he talks you through it, murmurs praise against your cunt.

Jimin mouths at you until you forget.

This isn’t your life. This is not something you can have.

But, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? You’ve made peace with death, and there’s only one of two ways it’s going to come for you in the end: by Namjoon’s hand or someone else’s. So what does it matter?

This time, Jimin fucks you slow. Kisses you with your taste still in his mouth. Thumbs over a hardened nipple just to see what earns him a reaction, and what you truly want is more time—something else that’s impossible.

Jimin’s hair is orange when you think you might be in love with him.

[ 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E | Paris, FRANCE ]

Jimin’s hair is pink when—

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the toilet.

Soaks a washcloth in warm water. Wrings it out. Stands in front of you, and there’s water dripping onto the floor and Jimin doesn’t care, doesn’t seem to see anything in this moment except for you, your hands covered in someone else’s blood, and he reaches out, gently grabs your wrist. Palm up. Someone else’s blood. Everything smells like copper and iron. Looks too surreal beneath the fluorescent lights of this hotel bathroom for your mind to make sense of it.

There is care in the way Jimin cleans your hands. There is tenderness in the way he both refuses to see what you really are and the way he’s the only one to ever see you so entirely, when you look down at the blood he’s washing away and all you can see is stigmata. When all you see is sin.

“I know you don’t love me,” he says, and there is a conviction in his words that stuns you into silence. “Not the way I love you, anyway.”

That tenderness is still there as he says this. As he presses the wet fabric into the meat of your palm, wipes the stains away, and the warmth is as calming as it is undeserved. It feels like something forbidden. It feels like salvation and condemnation all at once, like whatever sick depravity permeates you is contagious, will take over Jimin, too, just from touching you.

Jimin is close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to see the violence that he exists in alongside you: the rips in his clothes, the scars that decorate his skin. Close enough to know he smells sickly-sweet, just like death. Your hand shakes as it reaches for him and never follows through. Doesn’t want to contaminate him.

“I do,” you finally say. Whatever is in your voice is not conviction. “I can’t.” You suck in a breath, try to steady your breathing. This is where it all comes crashing down, you think, because in all the years you’ve done Namjoon’s bidding, you’ve never cried. You can take life so freely and without thought, but you cannot love Jimin. “Someone like me isn’t capable of it.”

Jimin pauses, the washcloth stuck in the space between your ring and middle fingers. “And who is someone like you?”

Water is still dripping to the floor. Serosanguineous: blood tainting something untouched. Not something one thing or another but both, watery-pink. Looks like Jimin’s hair. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” you answer. “More than I can count. More than I can name. More than the ones that come to haunt me at night.” Your free hand moves to your chest, covers your heart. “There’s nothing here, Jimin. I’m not sure there ever was.”

The washcloth drops to the floor, and all that blood belonging to a man whose name you never bothered to learn before you put a bullet between his eyes finds a new place to rest. “I think,” he begins, clasping your unclean hand in his own, voice dropping to a whisper, “you forget, sometimes.” You gasp as he places your palm to his cheek, drags it across his face, smears a stranger’s blood across his skin. “That we’re the same.”

Jimin is always overwhelming, but the love he has for you is even more so. It consumes you entirely, embeds itself beneath your skin, makes a home, would tear you apart, body and soul, to return to him.

[ 47.4979° N, 19.0402° E | Budapest, HUNGARY ]

Jimin’s hair is lavender when it all goes to shit.

“You’re being followed.”

Seokjin’s voice is garbled through the earpiece, tinny and metallic, and you roll your eyes. Some things don’t need to be said, because you’ve known someone was following you for the last three blocks. Average height, black peacoat, close-cropped haircut. Not the kind of person that’d stand out here, and that’s exactly why you’d sent Jimin in the other direction.

“No shit,” you respond in Hungarian, because you already know the man following you doesn’t speak or understand it. “Give me somewhere to go.”

It takes Seokjin a few moments to run the translation. “There’s a side street up on your right,” he answers. “It’s tight, but there’s an alleyway at the end. You can buy some time if you’re quick.”

“Where’s Jimin?”

You pass a vendor selling lángos and duck into the street behind the stall. Just as Seokjin had said, there’s a small alleyway up on the left, and your footfall is near-silent as you break into a sprint to reach it. “Safe,” is all Seokjin says.

You take a second to steady your breathing, knowing you’re good on time—the man following you was close enough to know where you’d turned, but, if you’re lucky, not much after that. That plays on a loop: if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky. What is luck, what does it look like, in a life left entirely to chance? In a life with no guarantees?

You tuck yourself away, focus on Seokjin’s metallic breaths. Think about his basement in Seoul, why he’s in it. Ask, “What happened in Addis Ababa?” because it feels important to know.

There’s not much you know about Seokjin’s life. Whatever happened in Ethiopia had been before your time, reduced to hushed whispers and gossip fodder after your arrival. No one spoke of it, Seokjin especially, but every now and then something would slip in the same way weeds grow in sidewalk cracks.

A job gone wrong. A bombing at the consulate with Seokjin inside.

His reply is simple, words spoken carefully: “I loved someone once, too.”

He can’t see it, but you nod nonetheless; an answer that doesn’t require a response, because you know. It’s enough to fill in the rest. What Seokjin’s trauma looks like. Why he doesn’t do field work anymore. Why he prefers the solitude of the basement, rarely a sound beyond the electric thrum of the server racks.

Who had gone in to retrieve him, and why Yoongi has the scar over his eye.

“You loved someone,” you conclude, “and he would’ve been willing to die for you.”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, and it’s like the word’s been punched out of him. Sounds like something repressed, something left to rot in the darkest corner of the world.

Love, to Seokjin, looks and sounds the same as death.

“I think most people spend their entire lives searching for a love like that,” he continues, and if you could see him you think he might look dazed, off-kilter. You think he might be an avatar. Seokjin is prying his ribcage apart, unwrapping the barbed wire from his heart, saying I once was in love and this is all I know of it. “But, to me, in this life, it’s a prison. Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? How do you—I kissed that skin. I worshiped it. I pressed my lips to it with whatever softness was left in me. How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled?” He exhales, all tremor. “You can’t. You can’t.”

You know this all too well. You know what it feels like to look at Jimin and know, intrinsically and subconsciously, that you wouldn’t even hesitate. You’d take and give life to keep him alive and safe. You know that when you exit this world at someone else’s hand his face is the last thing you want to see.

You know it’s a liability.

You know it’s a target painted on your back. Between your eyes.

You know there’s nothing left to say, that this particular conversation has run its course. The two of you sit in an amicable silence, and you hope Seokjin can hear the life that surrounds you, however mundane. Hope he can hear the lángos vendor trying to hawk his goods; hope he can hear a city 8,000 kilometers away; hope he can hear these regular, everyday people going about their lives and remember there’s hope beyond his four walls.

I think you’d like it here, you think, but you don’t dare to say it aloud.

Time passes in a meaningless blur. Could be minutes, could be hours. No one’s come to kill you, so you reckon you’ve long since been in the clear. And maybe it speaks to Seokjin’s idea that love is a prison, because you know something’s happened to Jimin long before Seokjin speaks it into existence.

You’re up and out of the alleyway before you’re told to move. Have no idea where you’re going, but you’re racing through the streets of Budapest with a panic you haven’t ever felt in your life. Feels like quicksand; feels like molasses; feels like you have to wade through all the blood you’ve spilled, now congealed, to get to him.

“Where am I going?” you demand. Your lungs are on fire. In the split-second of silence it becomes a desperate scream. “Seokjin, tell me where the fuck I’m going!”

“The—fuck, the wa-warehouse up on your right.” You can’t think about why he’s crying. “I don’t—I don’t know wha-what’s there, you need to be careful. Please, you have to—”

Twenty seconds and you’ll be there, you’ll be with Jimin, you just need to keep running. You need to keep your head on straight. Remember your training. Remember you’ve built a life in a viper pit.

A man in a uniform is unloading a shipment around the back of the building. Faces away from you, bent at the waist. Takes very little effort to smash his head into the stone exterior and knock him unconscious, pocket his badge. You can’t get stupid now. Tell Seokjin to make sure all the cameras are cut, ask what floor when you shut yourself inside the freight elevator, unwilling to take the stairs and run into anyone who might be waiting. All the way to the top, he says, so all the way to the top you go.

—

Over the course of your life, you’ve made peace with death. Have stared it in the eye more times than you can count. Have dealt it out, evaded it, shook its hand.

You are wholly unprepared for the sight that greets you.

Red. Everything is red—the walls, the floor, what used to be a beautiful parquet pattern in the wood. In the center of the room: two bodies, maybe three. Not much that’d be able to identify them beyond a pile of teeth, no saying whose is whose. Slaughterhouse scraps.

And this is not—Jimin doesn’t work this way. Isn’t his MO. Jimin’s kills are elegant and neat, topped with a bow. What you see before you is ultraviolence. It is unhinged, it is fury, it is a complete loss of control. It’s what love looks like to Jimin, because he sits at the very edge of a rotted chair, legs crossed. Face streaked with blood, clothes covered in it.

“Jimin,” you say, because what else is there?

He tilts his head to the side, smirks a little, looks at you beneath his lashes. Eyes that used to find you across a room and calm you. Eyes that have locked onto you in the throes of pleasure. Eyes you’ve seen yourself reflected in, bathed in love and adoration.

Eyes that now contain nothing.

“Jimin, what the fuck happened?”

He removes his gloves with his teeth and doesn’t flinch away from the taste of iron. “They said they hurt you,” he states simply, “so I did what needed to be done.”

“What—” Nausea claws at your throat; for the first time, it’s all too much. This isn’t Jimin. This isn’t your Jimin, who smiled as you posed him against apricot walls in Copenhagen, who took a bullet to the stomach to protect you and never, ever told you. This is not the Jimin who wasted the last of his goodwill on loving you. “What did you do?” you whisper.

He rises to full height and it makes you flinch. You are scared of Jimin for the first time in your life: scared of who he is in this moment, what he’s capable of. And he sees it, lets that brand of anguish overtake him. Reaches for you before he decides against it and lets his hand drop to his side. Says, “I would never hurt you,” as if the words could brand themselves into your skin so you’d never forget.

“No, you’d just—” You squeeze your eyes shut. Don’t think about how one of the men nearly embedded into the floor was the one trailing you earlier.

Instead, you think about Seokjin: Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? You think about: How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled? You think about: In this life, it’s a prison.

You drop to your knees. Let the blood seep through your clothes and into your skin, undeserving of shying away from it.

Namjoon should’ve let you go.

You think about the men in front of you. Who they were, who they loved. The grief all of this is going to leave behind, and it becomes impossible to breathe. You grasp at your throat, think about all the times you’ve been strangled and who’d been there to cut the rope. There is no limit to Jimin’s devotion, and you understand now, how it drove Yoongi to madness. How he loved someone so much he would’ve retrieved their corpse from a building and how that same person can no longer bear to look at the damage they’d caused.

“This isn’t love, Jimin,” you choke out.

He stands in front of you. Stigmata. You’re worshiping at the altar of some kind of devil. At least his hands are clean when he places his fingers beneath your chin, forces you to look up at him. “What is it, then?”

“Destruction.”

A quiet huff of cruel laughter. “See, this is the difference between me and you, darling.” He takes back his hand, runs it through his blood-streaked hair, and your chin sags to your chest without his support. “Because I already knew that. Because I have destroyed myself every single day loving you.” He squats down, eye-level, and he says, “I need you to listen to me when I say this, sweetheart: you do not love me the way I love you, because I would do worse. When it comes to you, there is nothing on this earth I would not destroy to keep you safe.”

He clears his throat. Collects whatever’s in his mouth and spits onto one of the bodies. “If this is enough to have you tucking your fucking tail between your legs, then go, because this doesn’t even scratch the fucking surface.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything, and sometimes that says it all.

Jimin presses a kiss to the top of your head. Makes a call. Cleaners will be here soon, he says, better get going.

You watch him go.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair is black when Namjoon calls the meeting.

He takes the seat across from Namjoon’s desk because they don’t meet like this often. Assignments are usually manila folders slipped under doors, hushed whispers in hallways confirmed with a nod or a text on a burner phone. Assignments are not last-minute assemblies in conference rooms and offices.

But the way Namjoon is looking at him, with his clenched jaw and a gaze that’s meant to look barbed to anyone who doesn’t actually know him—Jimin doesn’t need to ask what this is about.

Had he bothered to look, he would’ve known by the way you stood in the far corner of the room, face obscured by the mid-afternoon shadows. Yoongi’s close to you, for some reason: dressed head to toe in black, perched on a lateral file cabinet, using a metal corner to sharpen his switchblade. Just like a harbinger of death. Some sort of fucked up omen, a warning that’s come too late.

Didn’t I tell you this would end badly, he hears Yoongi taunt in his head. This is what happens when you lay with trash.

Easy for Yoongi to say when he doesn’t know what it means to be cared for by you. Doesn’t know how it feels to give in to the freefall and plummet at your feet, stripped back and laid bare. Doesn’t know how it feels to kiss secrets into your skin like constellations, to map his tongue along every unspoken confession.

Easy for Yoongi to say, because he doesn’t have to survive the aftermath. Doesn’t have to feel the heartbreak, the agony of having you and watching as you slip through his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t have to struggle just to breathe, doesn’t have to endure the nights staring at the ceiling, watching as the daylight creeps into the corners of his vision. Doesn’t have to watch you looking so unaffected.

“Jimin.” Namjoon’s tone is flat, needlelike.

Behind him, Yoongi chuckles lowly. “What?” Jimin asks, his gaze trained on the painting behind Namjoon’s head. Looks like one he’d seen in Berlin, the time the two of you had gone just because and spent an afternoon ducking in and out of museums to escape the rain.

When he closes his eyes, he still sees the raindrops stuck to your eyelashes. The beads of water rolling off the sleeves of your leather jacket. How blinding your smile had been. The laughter in your voice as you ordered beer after beer after beer for the two of you in flawless Berlinisch. A brief, fleeting glimpse at normalcy. At the kind of life the two of you could have if you were just… different. Lived different lives. Were different people.

“You’ve gotten sloppy.”

Namjoon’s words are a cold bucket of water. Snap him back to reality, yank him back to the present where he’s forced to leave those river-lined streets behind. You’re silent and Yoongi’s still snorting laughter. “Okay,” is all Jimin can bring himself to say.

Jin had gotten sloppy once, too, and Namjoon stuck him down in the basement to work logistics. Might not be so bad, Jimin reckons. He’d be away from you, spared of this fucking misery. “So you know that’s unacceptable.”

Jimin just shrugs, resigned to his fate, whatever it may be. “I’m reassigning the both of you,” Namjoon continues. “You’ll both have new partners for your next assignments, since you clearly can no longer be trusted together.”

“Who?” Jimin manages to choke out.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected an argument. “You’re being sent to Shanghai with Jungkook. You,” he says, turning his attention to you, “are going to Moscow with Taehyung.”

She’s fond of Taehyung, Jimin wants to say. But you’d been fond of him too, once upon a time, and that’d only ended in heartbreak, so who fucking cares.

They’re cruel, the tricks Jimin’s mind plays on him. How he convinces himself you look pained. How his fingers wring together at the thought of entrusting his life in the hands of someone else, someone new. At your life being just as at stake; at Taehyung being tasked with keeping you alive. Would you die for him, too, the way you’d always told Jimin you would for him? Would Taehyung take a bullet to the stomach to keep you safe the way Jimin had?

Even more cruel is the way you scoff, pushing yourself off of the wall as you fold your arms across your chest and say, “That’s bullshit, Kim Namjoon.”

No one talks to Namjoon that way except you.

Yoongi’s knife stops twirling. Just like a bird sensing a storm, senses on high-alert as he flicks his gaze over to you. “I’m sorry?” Namjoon says. “What part of Jimin losing his mind and nearly outing all of us seems like bullshit to you?”

“Hm, let me think,” you retort, a manicured finger tapping against the hollow of your cheek. “The part where you’re reassigning me for someone else’s mistake?”

Which part was the mistake? Jimin wants to ask. Needs to know how much you regret. Was sleeping with you the mistake? Falling in love with you? Getting too caught up in all these daydreams and letting reality get away from him?

“This organization is more important than Park Jimin getting his goddamn dick wet,” Namjoon snaps. “Keeping all of you safe—keeping you alive—is more—”

You scoff. Take an entire container of gasoline and pour it right on top of Namjoon’s flammable ire. “Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me why Min fucking Yoongi can fuck damn near everyone in this establishment, yet I have to sit here and listen to your goddamn mouth—”

Jimin doesn’t think Yoongi even knows his arm is moving.

There’d just been the trading of barbed words. His own name being spoken into the ether. Yoongi’s arm moving away from his body, switchblade clasped tightly between his fingers as he plunges it into your flesh.

Jimin watches it puncture your arm in slow motion. Feels the bile in his throat, the heat in his belly. Looks first at Namjoon whose jaw has gone slack, skin pale, as he stammers over words that won’t come. Then he looks at Yoongi—expects to find shock or guilt but finds only a muted disinterest and flared nostrils.

Finally, he looks at you. Watches the white cotton sleeve of your shirt slowly turn red and sticky-wet. Watches as your lips move around syllables and vowels and consonants Jimin can’t decipher.

“—fucking piece of shit, this is my favorite shirt! I’ll never get all this goddamn blood out of it—”

Jimin thinks he hears Yoongi say you deserve it. But Jimin isn’t really thinking much as he clambers out of his chair and moves in Yoongi’s direction. Doesn’t think at all as he lets instinct take over, lets adrenaline steer him headfirst into yet another bad idea.

He’s always known there’d come a day he’d be face-to-face with the sight of your blood. Had always known it’d come from someone else’s hand. Had always promised himself that hurting you would be the last thing anyone ever did.

Jimin has his fingers wrapped around Yoongi’s throat and he finally understands it—the joy Yoongi finds in taking life.

“What’s the matter, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi taunts. Jimin tightens his grip. Suddenly hates that fucking scar across Yoongi’s eye. “You’re never on clean-up duty. Always make your girlfriend do the dirty work. Finally grew some fucking balls, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Jimin says stupidly. Can’t think of anything more to say. Not that he needs to. Wrapping your hands around someone’s throat sends enough of a message, he thinks.

Namjoon’s still tongue-tied as you yank Yoongi’s blade from your arm, immediately pressing your other hand over the wound to stem the bleeding. The sight of your blood is making Jimin dizzy; the smell of the iron hanging in the air. All he wants to do is choke the life out of the man in front of him, but more than that, he just wants to hold your hand. Wants to comfort you, even though he knows you don’t need it. Not from him, not from anyone, but he still wants to. Wants to press his lips to the sweat at your brow.

And Yoongi can see it, too, because he starts laughing. It’s an odd, fractured noise. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s ever heard him laugh before, decides he also hates the way it sounds. Feels all wrong watching it leave his crooked smirk. Makes Jimin’s stomach plummet to the ground.

“Oh, you’re fucked, aren’t you?” Yoongi teases around Jimin’s slackened grip. “You weren’t just fucking her, you’re in love with her.”

Weird how Jimin is the one with his hands around someone’s neck and feels like he’s the one suffocating.

[ 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E | Shanghai, CHINA ]

Jimin watches the life drain from an innocent woman’s face and feels nothing.

Jimin watches Jungkook cut a man down and feels even less.

When it’s over, he cleans up wordlessly and doesn’t eat for three days.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair has faded to brown by the time he returns from Shanghai.

The more complicated job had gone to you and Taehyung. Jimin had tried not to take it personally. The Russian hits are always unnecessarily violent and Jungkook still isn’t fully trained. There’s still a phantom pain in Jimin’s stomach that warns him of the consequences of taking on more than he can chew. So, sure, Shanghai had gone fine, but his mind had been nearly 7,000 kilometers away the entire time.

Good thing he’d returned to Seoul unscathed, too, because he’s sure Namjoon would’ve eliminated him without a moment’s hesitation if he’d fucked up again.

But Shanghai had only served to prove the leader right. Jimin can’t work with you anymore. Can’t focus, can’t stomach the violence, can’t keep his goddamn head on straight.

He sighs as he glances at Jungkook to his right. Jimin had watched him murder two men in cold blood not even thirty-six hours ago and now he’s doe-eyed and sucking down his third banana milk of the morning. It really makes his head spin, being paired with this grown-up infant of a man now instead of you, but for all of Jungkook’s apparent shortcomings, he’d kept Jimin alive. He isn’t dead.

And then you walk in with Taehyung and he wishes he was.

Because you’re laughing and Taehyung’s got his arm slung around your shoulder and you look happy. It’s the kind of happiness that should be contagious, bloom warmth in his chest, but it doesn’t. It just takes the last frayed strand of hope he has and sets flame to it.

You don’t look like you miss Jimin at all. Don’t look like you’ve lost sleep or skipped meals.

“Didn’t take you long, did it?” Jimin says, because he’s wounded and lashing out. Not because he means it.

You must know he doesn’t, too, because you don’t react. “Watch your mouth, Park Jimin,” Taehyung warns, because he doesn’t know, and this only sets Jimin off more. You don’t need defending. Or had you, and Jimin had simply thought it wasn’t his place to provide it? That you wouldn’t want it?

“Or what, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung is cherubic. It’s part of his charm, one of many reasons why he’s so effective. If you’re looking to die, you look for the guy who looks like Yoongi, not the one who smiles wide and warm like Taehyung. So when he sets his jaw and pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you stupid fuck,” your attention is finally piqued.

“I’m so sick of this,” Jungkook wails, banana milk tossed carelessly in the trash. “All of you need to get your fucking shit together!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes at the same time you pretend to inspect your nails. “Is that why you’re so temperamental, Chim?” Taehyung prods, looking every bit the pretentious, murderous angel he is. “Because you got sent to China on a babysitting mission while the grownups did real work?”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook snaps, rising to full height. “I’m not a fucking child.”

“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Taehyung’s words are razor-sharp and smell like kerosene. “Tell me, then: were you on babysitting duty? Had to look after our precious little Jiminie while he nursed his broken heart?”

You sigh, full of faux-exasperation, and place a gentle hand on Taehyung’s forearm. Dig your nails in just enough to be a warning, and if Jimin hadn’t been looking he’d miss it: the way Taehyung deflates instantly, anger dissipating like smoke, back in control. Just because you’d touched him. Just because you were there. Jimin knows that touch, how it feels to be under your control, and it makes his chest ache. Makes everything feel like it’s sitting wrong in his stomach, and he’s either going to be sick all over Namjoon’s overpriced fucking rug or wrap his hands around Taehyung’s throat the way he’d done to Yoongi.

He’s out of his goddamned mind; he feels untethered. Helpless. Like it was always going to end like this, and maybe Jimin knew that and had just ignored it. Maybe now he’s paying the price—maybe he’s finally found something he can’t afford.

Jungkook’s still going off, nasty gaze set on Taehyung because he’s the only one playing along. They’re exchanging words Jimin can’t make heads nor tails of. Words he doesn’t care about. Words that ring empty and hollow because they sound nothing like the way you say his name. Shapeless, unlike the way your lips move around those syllables.

“Jimin,” you say, the sound finally registering and bringing him back down to earth. All he can do is stare. “Can we talk?” Taehyung and Jungkook are still trading barbs.

Wonders how he got here. Looks around the room and wonders if each and every one of them is destined for this same fate, this madness. Wants to tell you why he forgot his vest, why he was three hours late in Argentina. Wants to grovel and beg and leave this place and never look back.

More than anything, he wants to know what it feels like to actually be human.

So he shakes his head. Tries not to be haunted by the way your face falls at the rejection.

There is a scar on his abdomen and a scar on your arm that both tell the same story. There is a man in the basement who is in love with a man above ground and is too weighed down by guilt to do anything about it. There is a man here who plays god, has soldiers to do his bidding, and there is very little here that Jimin has only for himself.

The two of you will have that conversation, but he needs to be human, first.

[ 34.6901° N, 135.1956° E | Kobe, JAPAN ]

This is a waste of your fucking time.

Whatever Namjoon had thought would be here doesn’t seem to exist. Yoongi can barely tolerate you on a good day, threatens to stick a dagger in your neck at least twice an hour, but the more time the two of you waste chasing ghosts, the closer he comes to unraveling entirely.

“Stop fucking staring at me,” he snaps, blowing the smoke of his cigarette right in your face.

You tut. “But you’re so beautiful, Yoongi, I just can’t help it.”

He digs his switchblade from his boot. Makes a show of flipping it open. “I can cut your fuckin’ eyes out of your skull,” he intones. “Maybe that’ll help.”

In your ear, Jimin’s laughter rings like crystal.

Ricochets off of all the corners of Seokjin’s basement, makes the echo sound warped through the earpiece. “Please tell Yoongi-ssi to keep an eye on the man with the shaved head. In front of him, roughly sixty degrees to his right.”

You relay the message. Watch as Yoongi transforms—sharpened gaze, rigid posture, disappears into the shadows. More apex predator than man. “And me?” you ask.

“Backup,” comes Seokjin’s voice. “We haven’t found your mark yet.”

You hum. Pick up the cigarette Yoongi left behind and stick it between your lips. Smoke it nearly to the filter. “You got it, boss,” you tease, just because it flusters him.

“I’m—that’s not—knock it off.”

Exhale. Stub out the cigarette. Butt in your pocket. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says, and his voice is soft, sounds like spun sugar. “Stay alive, all right?”

Jimin’s hair isn’t dyed at all.

if you've read this far: thank you so, so much! i am more appreciative than i can put into words. this is very different from what i typically write, but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

i would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. &lt;3

[dirty-bear-rick-sanchez]

@5hrignold agreed!

does anyone think about the fact that rick never actually said "no" when morty asked him if he was bait for rick prime?

i doubt hes bait now but instead of just saying "no morty. youre not." he evades a clear response and instead specifically says "for you to be bait, it would mean he cares about something. he truly does not give a shit"

this is...interesting. theres sort of an implication there that rick KNOWS for sure rick prime doesnt care about anyone or anything. including his original family

i feel like, originally prime smith family WAS bait. or maybe as close to bait as they could be. rick has done some really terrible things with no remorse and when he finally joined the prime smiths, he was at his lowest point. i think rick reached a point where he was fully willing to kill this family to get back at prime

but prime didnt care. prime would never care. "he's the real deal."

so rick just...stayed there. and yea, morty is not bait NOW, so he technically didn't lie to the kid

[lowkeyrobin]

Hello! I was wondering if you could write a James Hook x Reader. She’s Hans’ daughter but her relationship with him is complicated. Since he couldn’t become king he wants the reader to marry a prince so she can be a queen in the future. She tells him no prince would ever fall for her bc she’s a VK to get him to stop pressuring her. But the truth is she doesn’t even want to marry a prince bc she likes James.

Although she’s Hans’ daughter she’s friends with Bridget and Ella bc she’s nothing like her father personality wise and doesn’t want to be ever. Which is why James became intrigued with her and flirts. She’s always standing up for Bridget.

Anyway at the end Hans somehow finds out what’s going on between reader and James. Later at night he confronts the reader about it stating that she will marry a prince. But she finally stands up for herself. You can decide what he says but then he leaves and she breaks down but James comforts her bc he heard everything. You can decide the rest.

Sorry this is long thank you in advance!

oooo okay okay I can try! ; just so yk I only do gn / they/them readers but I usually keep gender pretty ambiguous lol ; thanks for requesting, hope you enjoy! ; also this gives pink pony club and I need someone to agree cause I feel crazy for thinking it ??? ; update on that I listened to ppc and it's now heavily influenced on that last part

JAMES HOOK ; complicated

summary ; a vk who acts like an ak catches his attention, fascinating him

warnings ; language, use of gorgeous but in a gn way who cares about societal norms

word count ; 1.5k

masterlist

"That boy, uh... Prince Charming, at your school, why not marry him?"

"Oh my fucking Christ, Dad" You groan. "One, I'm a VK, two, he doesn't like me, nor do I like him, three, stop with this conversation"

"What about that Snow White girl?"

You grumble, stomping away to your room to get away from your self projecting father. Every day for the past God-knows-how-long he'd keep bringing up you marrying into a royal family. Just because he lost a girl by being a douchebag apparently meant he had to project his insecurities on you.

You weren't like him at all, nor did you ever want to be. He was a complete asshat from what he's told you, thinking he was always in the right. You were a VK gone soft, or a VK with morals and a good heart, whatever floats your boat.

Your best friends Bridget and Ella were AK's who'd welcomed you into the good side with open arms. They were quiet and sort of shy, too scared to stand up for themselves. But that's why they had you, because being born as a villain kid meant you could be mean, you could use your voice to get what you wanted, or at least try.

"Go away, Hook. Leave her alone." you call, walking up on James and Maleficent picking on Bridget and her bright pink flower themed cake.

"Or what?" He questions, leaning away from Bridget, turning to you as you stand in front of her. "Gonna walk the plank for me?"

You roll your eyes. "Are you looking for a fight? What do you guys get out of doing this?"

He shrugs deviously. "Entertainment, darling."

"Go away," you order, "Unless you really wanna put your Captain title at risk." You turn around, pulling Bridget away from the duo.

"Confident, are you?" He laughs. "Wait and see, gorgeous," he turns around, pulling his partner along.

Maleficent hisses, watching as you and Bridget walk away.

"What's with you and that fake VK?" she asks him.

James shrugs.

"Well, hello again, darling"

"Don't you ever go away?"

"You've got a mouth for an Auradon Kid, don't you?" He chuckles. "Wait... you're not an Auradon Kid. You're a VK."

You roll your eyes. "Just cause I was conceived by a villain doesn't mean I am a villain"

He sighs. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."

You turn around, seeing him still standing over you. Can't a person get five minutes alone in the library?

"What do you want?"

He shrugs. "Wanted to ask why you've joined the good side. You're always defending those girls. It's weird"

"How is having morals weird?" you ask. "Genuinley. Sit"

He glances around with furrowed brows before joining you, taking a seat beside you. He sits sideways to face you, resting his hooked hand on the table.

"What makes you think harassing people is fun?"

He shrugs. "It's funny, entertaining."

"Sadly, I can't control your actions." you speak with a light sigh, turning back to your book.

"Why do you defend them?" He asks rather swiftly.

"Because they're my friends?" you reply.

He tilts his head. "You're fascinating"

You groan. "I'm a normal, not evil person"

"And I'm not?"

"No, you're a bitch"

"Hello, love"

"Piss off"

"You should be nicer to me. After all..."

"Close your damn mouth. There is nothing going on between us"

Bridget and Ella, wide-eyed, turn to you.

You exhale through your nose, slowly closing your eyes to find yourself and to not freak out. You look at them, a kind smile on your face.

"There is nothing going on between us" you repeat.

"I'd beg to differ..." James mumbles while Morgie giggles.

You turn to the girls. "Go to class, I'll be there in a minute"

They nod, walking to the classroom just down the hall.

You cross your arms, waiting for James to speak. Morgie stands beside him before he's shoo'd away, making the conversation private.

James smiles, pulling a sandwich bag out of his coat. Inside rests three slightly crumbled cookies that he'd made just for you. He holds them out to you, a cautious and slightly concerned look on his face.

"Sorry your dad's been... y'know"

You shrug, accepting the sweet treats. "It's fine, just pisses me off. Thank you, though"

"Anytime, darling"

"You need to stop with that. Someone's gonna catch on that there is actually something going on between us"

"Eh, I'm alright with that"

"See you later, pirate boy"

"Hook you later, love"

You press a chaste kiss to his lips before running up the front steps of your house, opening the door with a small smile on your lips. You close the door behind you, watching through the window as your little love interest walks away.

You walk into the living room, saying hello to your father, backpack slung over your shoulder. "I'm home"

"How was your day?" He asks, flipping the TV to another channel.

Your ears painfully vibrate due to the sound of your father sharpening a knife in his lap. God, he couldn't pick a better time?

"Fine," you wince. "I'll be in my room. I have homework"

You quickly walk away before he can speak anymore, knowing leftover dinner was in the fridge for you to access. Having homework wasn't a lie, but you were definitely lying about doing it.

As darkness fell, and after you'd dropped multiple hours cleaning your room, you opened up your window, allowing the fresh, cool air into the stuffy warm room. You lean against the window sill, awaiting your dumb love, the breeze brushing against your face.

You knew this was wrong, all of it. You'd been having wicked dreams of leaving Auradon, hearing new, distant lands calling your name. You'd never make your father proud. He'll see his baby and scream, 'God, what have you done?' as you wave goodbye on a ship with James, dressed to explore the world.

You had dreams, he had expectations.

You imagined a wide open sea, James Hook at your side, the salty air against your face. It was a daydream, one that could be accomplished. You imagine a whole world to explore, all the things you'd never seen, you'd be able to experience. From waterfalls to exotic animals, you wanted to see it all, you wanted to see all the sunsets and cultural differences. You wanted it all.

"Hey!"

"Hi!"

You watch as Hook climbs up the tree in your front yard, then use your little zipline connected to the roof to enter your room through the window. You grab his hand, pulling him into the refreshed bedroom you called home.

He rests his hands around your waist, his signature smirky-smile upon his face. "I missed you oh-so dearly"

You scoff. "It's been like, five hours"

He pulls you closer, smashing your lips together like this was some romantic romance movie where the two main characters had to leave each other in the end. He shoves you to the bed, allowing you to sit on the mattress as he stands over you, his hook lightly tracing your jawline, his hand resting on the nape of your neck.

Your door flings open, the two of you jumping in fear, eyes glued to the room's entrance. James quickly scrambles out the window, leaving you alone to deal with your father.

"Are you kidding me, Y/n?! First you're kissing a boy outside, then you're sneaking him into my house! For the last time, you'll be marrying into royalty, not sneaking around with some pirate wannabe!" Your father shouts. "I'll be boarding up your window from now on and I'll be taking this damn door away too."

"Just because you have a soft ego and are a narcissistic piece of shit doesn't mean you can force your insecurities on to me!" You yell. "My love life has nothing to do with you at all. I'm not going to be some teenage newlywed so you can ruin a whole kingdom's worth of lives through me. I am not you and I will never be you!"

He's too stunned to speak, surprised that you've talked back, the words leaving your lips like you had them ready to use. You stare into his soul, heavily breathing, fists clenched as you stand in front of him.

You rush to the window as he leaves, slamming the door behind him, not sure how to approach the situation. You slide out the open window, holding back tears.

James quickly wraps you in a hug, allowing you to crumble in his arms.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" He whispers, holding onto you tightly.

"It's fine" You shake your head with a grumble. "Fuck"

His hand rubs your shoulder.

You sit in silence with him for a few minutes, carefully listening as your father stomps around the house.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, love. Do you need somewhere else to stay?-"

"I'm fine" You reply. "I'll be fine"

He's silent for a moment. "I don't feel comfortable leaving you here"

"He won't hurt me. He's a wimp with an ego." You shrug.

He nods. "Yeah, that's true"

You quickly look up at him, a random thought in your brain. "Have you ever seen a flamingo before? In real life?"

"I've conquered the seven seas, babe. Of course I have"

"Cool"